Music workshops, singing and playing events

It may be small by global standards, but the Gilbert and Sullivan weekend at Musatelier is the biggest G&S event in this area. As G&S is bewildering to most French locals, we rely on people coming from elsewhere - mainly from England.

This year we are having a bash at Yeomen of the Guard.

The plan is:
Friday evening sort-out music and parts, eat together.
Saturday practices and a little sight-seeing; evening meal is either out at La Daugaterie or pizza delivery.
Sunday run-through twice, the second time with a small audience of friends and neighbours.

Visitors are welcome to arrive before and stay after. There is a limited amount of sleeping-space in the house and rooms with helpful neighbours; people who prefer/can afford plusher accommodation have a choice of nearby chambres d'hôtes and gîtes.

Some of the solos are taken, but we're short of baritones. Chorus are very welcome. You'll have to find a score, but it is possible to download one.

It won't be staged, and we don't expect people to learn the parts off by heart (though that would be especially good!) but some attempt at costumes would be appreciated.

After a shaky time of people being unable to make the dates after all, people dropping out, illness, accidents, and family emergencies, the Mikado Weekend finally went ahead. It was splendid in spite of not having enough people for the number of rôles.

We had rehearsals, note-bashing, and divinding up of parts. The final sing-through went very well with the use of hats to denote which rôle one was singing. The Mikado had to double as Pish-tush for three bits and is now known as Pishado. The one-and-only tenor is really a high baritone so he made an excellent Ko-Ko (with a real sword lent by Pishado, who was dressed up in white tie and Masonic regalia for Mikado). Katisha (normally a high soprano, revelling in a very dramatic mezzo-soprano) and Yum-Yum and Ko-Ko shared Nanki-Poo between them, depending on how high it was and with whom he was duetting.

There was even dancing! Ko-Ko and Katisha danced a polka, and Pitti-Sing led some of the chorus in a brief display of footwork.

Accompanist Roy's hands are almost falling off from playing all practices and performance plus the Saturday evening accompaniments of various arias, and then some more today.

For the soirée musicale, French friends brought a couple of chorus songs and canons as well as their performance pieces. Mike did some fabulous comic songs. He and Elizabeth sang a beautifully harmonised Wild Mountain Thyme with extra harmonies supplied by the Anglos. To the bemusement of the French, the Anglo immigrants produced a gleeful Hippopotamus Song. We sang Berkeley Square and Daisy Bell too, and though the rest of the French crowd looked politely puzzled, Cécile's elderly mother was in tears of joy because it brought back memories of surreptitious listening to BBC radio during WWII. Apparently it was a gleam of light during the occupation.

And all agreed there were none like we, and we'll do another in the spring. Iolanthe? Gondoliers? Pirates? (Pitti-Sing is going to teach the police-and-pirate choruses to the tenors and basses of her group, and there is a supply of costumes.)

The Ruddigore sing-through was a success, and people are still asking for another. It's been suggested that a weekend would be better than one day, giving us chance to work on it a little (and opportunity for some sight-seeing).

A weekend of Mikado

Where: Musatelier, St-Dizant-du-Gua http://www.musatelier.eu

When: Possibly 19 - 20 September 2015