Several evenings this past week were filled with special events.  It’s unusual to have so many scheduled in one week, but there you go, it’s the life of the unemployed; I’m unhindered with work and able to accept all invitations!

Last Sunday my husband and I went to a tiny, intimate theater in downtown Detroit to watch Rita McKenzie’s “Ethel Merman’s Broadway.”  I didn’t know much about Merman prior to this show, which told her life story in the first person.  Rita McKenzie dressed and sang like Merman as she talked about her life.  It was a lot of fun.

Thursday I attended the University of Michigan’s version of “The Marriage of Figaro” with my aunt.  It was so professionally done and we had great seats which allowed me to watch the pit orchestra as well as the stage.  I’m not an opera fan, but this one was very funny, with modern translations of the words being sung.  I enjoyed it and didn’t realize till after it was finished that it had gone on for over three and a half hours!

Last night found us back in Ann Arbor with my aunt, attending the Ann Arbor Symphony.  They did three pieces.   After hearing the first, Overture on Hebrew Themes by Sergey Prokofiev (who did the ballet scores for Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet and Peter and the Wolf,) I thought to myself, “Well that’s probably going to be my favorite this evening” because it was so fun, flirty and light with bits of humor and history thrown in.

After the second piece, Symphony No 1 in C Major by Georges Bizet, written when he was 17 years old in 1858 as a homework assignment...I thought to myself, “That last movement is my favorite tonight…the violins were crazy busy, off to the races, and it ended about 3 times, almost as if the composer was saying ‘See teacher?  Here’s some MORE..and some MORE and MORE!’ ”  I couldn’t believe he wrote it at seventeen. And that it wasn’t played for 80 years because he didn’t feel it was worthy, and that it languished in the basement of his school until it was discovered by someone doing his biography.

Then the crowning glory of the evening, a piece by Johannes Brahms,  the Concerto No 2 for Piano and Orchestra.  The guest pianist was Anton Nel, originally from South Africa, once a piano professor at UM, now teaching in Austin TX.  He was phenomenal.  I thought to myself  “Well…I guess in the end the last movement of the Brahms is my favorite for the evening…it’s racy tunes, the strings driving toward the finale…a wonderful end to a wonderful evening.”   Everyone in the audience was on their feet as soon as the last note began to die away.

While we were clapping I wished that everyone in the world could sit where I sat; that surely if they could then we could end wars and crime and all injustice.   Because how could anyone that received such a beautiful gift, that let such beauty inside themselves, anyone who sat next to strangers and felt their hearts expand..how could these people not be positively effected?  I know, I know. Totally unrealistic.  But still.

There were four curtain calls.

And then a grateful gasp rose from the hall as Dr. Nel, exhausted from the 50 minute concerto he had just finished, sat back down at the piano.  Just one man, one piano.   And then the sound.. the most beautiful, most soulful, indescribable sound.  He played something from Franz Liszt, I don’t know which piece.  It was so very beautiful that tears ran down my face.  And I said to myself…”This is my favorite.”

I don’t think I was alone.