Today was the first music rehearsal for a new Baroque pantomime called The Corona-Files by a little known composer called Mozart! Apparently, Mozart was a long way ahead of his times... and predicted the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 way back in the 18th century! So prepared, that he managed to write a little non-spoken play with music...
The actors and continuo have been in rehearsal and planning for a couple of weeks already... but the lazy arse musicians started today... with two concerts at the Koninklijke Schouwburg (Royal Theatre) of Den Haag tomorrow. Sadly, it will be for limited audience due to the Coronavirus restrictions. However, we are pretty happy that the concert made it to the end without being cancelled! (Unlike many many others...).
Okay... so, you might have guessed that Mozart DIDN'T know about the Coronavirus pandemic in the 18th century... and that quite a bit of this play is a modernised adaption of some of his music. So, the music is partly from Mozart. There is are the surviving parts of the 1st and 2nd violin scores for a play that Mozart had written the music for... AND ACTED IN! So, instead of playing the violin or viola or piano... he was actually on stage. It was likely that this was more of a private sort of performance for friends or family rather than a public production.
The lead actor and music director of Musica Poetica came up with a Coronavirus dark comedy sketch, and then were able to piece together the fragments of Mozart's original music... and compose the rest of the music (including the missing continuo and other parts) to fit together into a coherent play with music.
Due to the Coronavirus restrictions, the singers aren't really allowed to sing in a confined space... however, they have long practiced rhetorical gesture and acting, and so they put their skills to the playing of the characters in the comedy.
The piece is scored for Violin, Flute, Continuo (Harpsichord and Cello)... and there are three actors and a dancer. There is a minimal backdrop (as you can see in the photos) and the piece is in three very short acts, weighing in at around 30-40 minutes total.
With such sporadic performance opportunities at the moment, it is great to be getting back into action with a flexible and adaptive group! There is very little preparation time, so there is quite a lot of responsibility for the musicians to just make things work in as little time and discussion as possible... of course, this group is quite comfortable with the "in the moment" spontaneity that isn't always so common in the Classical Music world, so we have little to worry about there! Preparation is one part of the concert... the rest is just winging it and being a little bit of a chaos monkey!
Looking forward to the performances tomorrow, and hopefully we will have some videos and audio to share with you all soon via the Musica Poetica website!
