I'm a baritone in the Giuseppe Verdi Chorus (its Italian name is Coro Verdi), which rehearses Monday nights--except in summer-- at the Columbus Centre near Dufferin & Lawrence. It's conducted by Giuseppe Macina, also the man behind the Toronto Opera Repertoire.
In recent times we've been presenting two operas in concert form every year, but this year we've cut back to one. I prefer it that way: it'll give us more time for folk songs and such. The opera we're doing this year is Verdi's MACBETH.
For the first month or two this year we rehearsed MACBETH, but now it's time to prepare for our Christmas concert. My favorite among our Christmas pieces is Pietro Yon's "Gesu Bambino." We also do stuff like "The Little Drummer Boy," in which the men keep repeating "Prum, prum..." for the first verse, then "Prum, pum-pum..." in the second, and in the third verse it gets complicated, with stuff like "Prum, puddly-pum..." (That song always reminds me of TRU, Robert Morse's sad one-man show about Truman Capote, in which he talked about Christmas a lot and they played that song near the end.)
A lot of people were absent tonight, what with the weather already getting raw as Sandy approaches. Also, some people didn't know what we'd be rehearsing and didn't bring their Christmas music. (I've solved that problem by carrying all my Coro Verdi music in the same bag. I have strong arms.)
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