A Lovely Evening Despite My Brain

Not even my weird brain could screw it up. We spent a delightful evening in the park Friday listening to the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra perform a program of light classics. It was two-hours of music you recognize and enjoy instantly. If you asked me "How does the Waltz from Sleeping Beauty go?" I couldn't tell you, but as soon as I heard it, as we were still walking across the park to the pavilion, I heard it and thought, "Sleeping Beauty!" 

(And yes, we were still on island time. The concert started at 6 sharp. We were island fashionably late.) 

The program also included Hungarian Dance No. 5. ("Oh yeah! Hungarian Dance!") Broadway classics such as "Some Enchanted Evening" and a terrific medley of Duke Ellington songs. Altogether a lovely evening on the sunny lawn at La Freniere. And it was augmented by one of the greatest snacks I've ever had – raspberry/dark chocolate M&Ms. (One warning, don't eat too many of these at one time. The raspberry makes it look as if you're gums are bleeding. Although it's worth it.) I particularly loved the Ellington medley. "A Train," "Mood Indigo," "Sophisticated Ladies," "Satin Doll." What great, great music. Reminded me of a story, which I'll tell some other time. Or never.

There was one fly in the ointment, and this is where my weird brain came in. In introducing a medley from "Fiddler on the Roof," the conductor, a very personable Glenn Langdon, gave some amusing background to the show, and said it was first performed in 1946. I thought I must have heard it wrong, but he said it twice. I asked Tori and she agreed that's what she'd heard. "That's not right!" I thought, and I couldn't shake it. I was still feeling that way the next morning.

Anyone who knows anything about musical theater knows "Fiddler" premiered in the '60s. Langdon even mentioned, correctly, that it was Zero Mostel's return to Broadway after his hit two years earlier in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," which was written by Steven Sondheim who would have been 16 years old in 1946 and 14 two years earlier. Sondheim was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein in the late 1940s, so 1946 was just impossible. Further, in one of those weird things that no one should know but for some reason I do, famed 1970s/'80s game show host Bert Convy was also in the original Broadway cast, which would have been unlikely had the show opened in 1946.

When I woke up Saturday morning it still bothered me. I looked it up and sure enough, "Fiddler on the Roof" opened on Broadway in 1964, not 1946. All I can guess is Mr. Langdon, a wonderful musician, has a touch of dyslexia and transposed the digits in his notes.

But that's me all over. My mother once called me, "a font of useless information" (I think she meant that endearingly. I certainly hope so.) Things get in my head and bounce around and sometimes they won't let me rest until I sort them out.

But putting that to the side, it was a beautiful evening of music that Tori and I really enjoyed, sitting in the new lawn chairs we'd purchased that afternoon for the event. (Along with the M&Ms!) She also made me buy a new pair of shoes, which I hate doing more than almost. anything. I am not a good shopper, and I particularly loathe shoe shopping. But I'd avoided it several years and the shoes I was wearing were starting to get a little run down, I admit it.

So I now have a new pair of shoes, which I will wear 'til they fall off my feet as per usual, a new favorite snack, and a memory of lovely evening at the park with Tori.