Review: The Glory of Carmina
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 by Maryam Webster
Attended the glorious San Jose Ballet and Symphony Silicon Valley performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana last night. I’ve been stuck on this piece of music for years and have performed it as an alto chorus member a number of times. It’s both sweet and bombastic - the initial movement, "O Fortuna" has been used as a stage-setter in many heroic movie battle scenes.
As you can see from the promo photo at left, the stage was initially set with a giant Wheel of Fortune-cum-altar. No, you who are thinking television game shows, it’s the Wheel from traditional hermetic magic and tarot. With a pentagram in the center. Scattered in the audience, assorted gaggles of Wiccans and hermetics burst into tears of rapture as the curtain went up. My partner turned to me and said "I’d go back to being pagan if I could get twenty guys to reliably show up and dance like that at rituals…and the set designer as well…."
While parts of the performance dragged, and local dance critic Rachel Howard of the San Francisco chronicle was ever-so (yawn) bored, the majority of the audience remained fascinated to the denouement and gave the cast a resounding standing ovation.
The opening ballet, Summerscape, while well danced and whimsical, felt like a "cartoon before the feature" in contrast to what followed. Nice and well choreographed, it didn’t merit the endless rounds of standing ovation applause Carmina garnered for its sheer overwhelming technical artistry. Veteran Dennis Nahat ably choreographed both ballets, and the 130 voice chorus with its three featured vocalists, cloaked as monks (oh, the bass soloist! perfection!) contributed equally to Carmina’s soaring spectacle.
Was I alone in observing the deliberate mispronounciation of the lyrics in Carmina? I learned the lyrics while singing with a Cambridge, England church chorus. Our director and music teachers were German and Italian respectively, the languages of the Carmina. (well Latin, but Giovanni was well versed in his high church speak). I’ve never heard the C’s and G’s pronounced in quite the same way as the singers in SJB’s version - it almost seemed like a foreign language.
The fellow next to me had also sung in Carmina and, looking at me perplexed during the interval, said: "Was I hearing aright, or are they misprounouncing the thing?" Check out any CD of Carmina for compares.
I wonder - artistic choice or something else?? Comment, Herr Director?
If you haven’t been to SJB’s Carmina, you’ve already missed it, but do go and see Nahat’s venerable Nutcracker, opening December 9th. Well worth it for an evening’s dress-up and good funtime. Don’t forget dinner after the show at the inimitable Il Fornaio down the street. Best and thickest cappucino’s in San Jo. Tell Edgar and David that I sent you. 
My friend Mira Wooten (one of my awesome "Women of Everyday Bliss" interviewees) with her band, "Women with Strings Attached" returns for the third time, to the Little Fox Theater in Redwood City, CA, on Sunday, November 18 at 7:00 pm. This show will be a fundraiser for Shelter Networks, with 50% of the proceeds going to the charity. 
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