They should let her wear a pashmina

On Saturday we made the long drive out to York University for the opening concert of the Black Creek Summer Music Festival, featuring Placido Domingo and Sondra Radvanovsky. It had been raining and cold all morning and the concert was in the Rexall Centre, which is an open-air amphitheatre. What if it started raining again? And, did people really come all the way out here to go to school? We were musing so hard about this that we missed the Keele Street exit off the 401 and caused ourselves untold grief. 

I had never seen either of them perform and fully expected to be wowed, especially by Placido Domingo. He is one of those celebrities who are so famous you almost can't perceive them. There they are right in front of you, but there too is their image, standing in front of them and getting in the way. So much so that after one particularly iconic number towards the end -- perhaps "Some Enchanted Evening" -- Michael turned to me and exclaimed, "He sounds just like Placido Domingo!"

Our seats were at stage level so we could see who in the orchestra had and had not shined their shoes for the occasion. The oboists had their reeds stuck in the corners of their mouths; the French horns looked discontented. I understand the feeling -- I played the French horn for about a nanosecond, and it is an instrument that will let you down if it possibly can.

It was freezing, and here were all these people in fancy clothes, the woman in front of me wearing the most beautiful gown with only a light wrap. The man sitting behind us was manifestly a music critic, saying erudite things in orotund tones to the woman beside him. I was longing for a parka, and there was Sondra Radvanovsky on stage in an off-the shoulder sleeveless gown. 

"In this weather," the lady with the music critic said severely, "they should let her wear a pashmina."

Placido Domingo was as wonderful as one could hope -- and a very generous performer -- but it was Sondra Radvanovsky who really wowed me. She is an incredibly intelligent singer. She feels her way through the delicate emotional dynamics as few singers can. And she's a great comic actress: her "I Want to Be a Prima Donna" was hilarious. She can sing Lerner and Loewe without that creepy opera singer diction. I would totally go to see a My Fair Lady with her in it.

What with the orchestra and the choir and Domingo and Radvanovsky, the stage looked a little like a medieval depiction of the world, Adam and Eve at the centre, the orchestra spread out behind them, the choir behind like a bank of hovering angels. The grips in black hoodies chewing gum at the side of the stage looked like Death, symbolizing the vanity of all things and how they end in the grave.

We Torontonians can be a tough crowd but we usually come around in the end. This is because we like value for money and don't like to let performers go without at least one encore. In this case I think the encores may have outnumbered the actual program -- I lost count at five. There was "Besame Mucho"; there was "Over the Rainbow"; there was "Vissi d'arte" from Tosca; there was "Granada." There was the duet from "The Merry Widow."

There were fireworks.

"Bravo Sondra!" someone in the audience yelled.

"They mean Brav-a," the music critic said, "But."