Ever the workhorse, I have decided that improvised blog posts fail to satisfy my literary ambitions, so you are reading the first post for which I have written a first draft. Hopefully now, with time to reflect on both content and style, I will truly impress you all with my clear renderings and brilliant writing.
Last night was a street festival, to celebrate the solstice as far as I could tell. When I arrived there were actors on stilts doing some sort of interpretive dance. There was a moon and sun, stars, and two folks in black who were clearly the bad guys. They were accompanied by a smattering of pseudo-Early Music. To be honest, I didnàt have much of a clue of what was going on. I'd like to blame the language barrier, but there was no speaking. I'll have to use the excuse of not being fluent in Ren Faire.
The Medieval Times vibe subsided a bit for the 'fountain show'. I don't even know what to call it - they shot water up in the air, lit it up all different colors and played music along with it. Proving that some things are universal, oneo f the recorded pieces was the second movement of Carmina Burana. I felt like I was at a Patriots' game.
After the fountain experience, they played whatever American music they had until late into the night, and all the Italians stood in a circle to watch the Americans have a dance party in the piazza. I pretty well destroyed my gold shoes on the cobblestone, and shared my dancing skills with another continent. Think Elaine Benes meets 'Janet Reno's Dance Party'.
Prior to 'Witchfest', as some of the girls call it (my attendance at which will likely condemn me to eternal hellfire) I had an uneventful day. I coached a few arias with one of the Italian coaches, and she said something that really stuck with me. While encouraging me to sing more legato, she kept saying I needed 'più colla'. She realized I didn't know that word, so I kept guessing what it might mean. Finally she looked it up: it means glue. It seems that's a word that they use to describe a quality of legato singing, and it makes me look at legato a whole new way.
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