 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-04-08 00:59
Years ago I attended an Opera Australia performance of Boris Godunov (1979). I was studying clarinet with the then principal clarinet of the Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra (now called the Opera and Ballet Orchestra), whose home is the Opera Theatre at the Sydney Opera House.
Anyhow - I was up at the top of the dress circle and could see down into the pit (rather like the Bayreuth pit in that it's completely submereged under the stage and not visible from the stalls) and was admiring the playing and singing when a chicken flew from the stage into the orchestra pit, landing amongst the cellists - of course the poor beast was rather startled and clucked and pooed all over the place until one of the orchestra's men-in-black rescued it and removed it from the pit.
There was much "silent laughing" going on in the orchestra and this event cause the management of the Opera House to put a (still existing) net over the pit. The chicken had impeccible taste!
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Author: Pam H.
Date: 2003-04-08 02:17
We've never had live animals in the pit at church. One year before I was in orchestra I understand that there were quite a few little plastic lizards everywhere for one of the concerts. Our choir ladies have a lizard/pin thing on their concert dresses so that's where that idea came from. I think they were still finding lizards months later.
Lately, we just have to make sure we are not goofing off too badly. We have a violist/bass guitar who is also a rehearsal conductor who is quite the cut up. He thinks that no one can see his antics "out there" but we can see him quite well in the pit. Of course, during church services, we have orders to behave ourselves which makes it all the more difficult to do so at times.
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2003-04-08 02:50
We toyed with the idea of sending lingerie up with a fishing pole once. It was back in college, and we were doing L'elisir d'amore. We (apparently) were the river (yeah, lots of jokes about Rhine maidens yo-ho-to-ho'ing and stuff)... The first oboist was charged with placing a prop fish on the fishing line dropped from the stage near him. Unfortunately we never messed with it! Woulda been fun...
And when I played in summer stock in New England, the "Bauble, Bangle, and Bead" seller from Kismet lost several items one night...our bassoonist decided she needed to wear one...
And then there was the "gala 25th anniversary" performance for a dance troupe a couple of years ago with all kinds of guest stars. In one show, I ended up with at least 3 barrettes, hankies, and bobby pins...
Katrina
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Author: clarinetmama
Date: 2003-04-08 04:25
A bat flew into the theatre during a show I was doing. It swooped over our heads and then parked itself on the stage wall for the rest of the show. It made its way first over the audience. It was like watching a wave being done from front to back and then to the front again.
Krupke's night stick nearly konked me on the head during West Side Story. Being young and not knowing what to do, I tossed it back onstage.
Clothes fell onto one of our sax players in a strip number from Gypsy. He enjoyed that a little too much.
And the baton twirler in Music Man dropped her baton into the pit, missing my very pregnant belly by inches. Speaking of that, I was 8 months pregnant with my son and we played in a movable pit. As we were about one third of the way up there was no getting in or out until intermission. The younger guys in the show were so funny...they were convinced I would go into labor and have the baby right there. Lucky for all of us he waited.
Jean
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Author: Tom A
Date: 2003-04-08 11:54
Not entirely in the pit, but worth telling.
At a large church musical, the second lead was doing a brief song and dance routine, in front of other characters, near the edge of the stage. The (acted) reaction of the first lead character was to be embarrassment.
A small part of the stage gave way, and the second guy fell onto the trumpets right in front of him. As he helped his colleague out of the pit, the first lead's embarrassed expression didn't change.
He simply said, "Don't worry. It's just a stage he's going through."
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2003-04-08 12:09
In a production of HMS Pinnafore, there were 8 planned encores of the "Bell Trio", each one more actively choreographed than the last. The one line, "and the men who sail the water," kept getting more strained and out-of-breath, until the baritone could only say "water". On the last encore, the horn player behind me stood up holding a tray, with a towel on his arm, said "Water" at the proper moment, and the baritone came over for a drink.
In La Belle Helene, someone is disguised as a shephard. "But where are your sheep?" the young lady he is wooing asks. During the last Saturday night performance, at this point, one of the stagehands introduced a live sheep on stage. The sheep really didn't want to go out, and there was a stagehand's Levi-clad leg, with cowboy boot, visible from the house prodding the sheep out. It took the cast and audience about 10 minutes to recover from this little number. One of the tenors had a farm and borrowed the animal from a friend. They brought it in during the early afternoon, and husbanded it away in an unused closet filled with straw, near the lady's chorus dressing room. Apparently the sheep had, every so often, let out a single "baa". One of the ladies remarked afterward, "I thought it was Ron warming up."
In G&S Patience, there is a brief clarinet cadenza, which leads Patience into a song. The soprano picks a point in the middle of the cadenza to take her preparatory breath, and the clarinet's dominant note at the end of the cadenza immediately begins her next song. One night, with the conductor's approval, I extended the end of this cadenza substantially, with some material taken from cadenzas from several concerti. The singer took her breath, but I kept going on, with no end in sight. People tell me that her expression, as she tried to start to sing but stopped, several times, was priceless. Good thing for me she had a sense of humor.
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