At Paul Dresher Studio today for Dioclesian/Diocletian rehearsal, including (from the latter) I. First Paragraph Music (Abject and Obscure),
with Maria Mikheyenko as Edward Gibbon, Kimberley Anderman as Drusilla, and
Indre Viskontis, Kathleen Cornelius, Erin Lahm, Annemarie Ballinger, and Robin Costa as a host of Roman-Greco-Byzantium courtiers;
II. E-I-E-I-O Thunder, featuring
and loving fisticuffs;
III. Happy Funeral Music,
the cast now as
Christians
mowed down;
IV. What Shall I Do?;
V. Speak, Flame (we look forward to the return of Alexandra Jerinic, as Diocletian, and
Allison Collins, next week); and
VI. Country
Dance. It's a marathon six-hour rehearsal, appropriately focused on Purcell, directed by
Harriet March Page, with
Skye at the breathtakingly-out-of-tune piano for the first three+ (the saint!), as arranged.
After, Harriet and I make our way across Oakland to Rockridge, and after a brief wander, make a da capo double return to a window table at Wood Tavern, whereupon the Lafayette-Moraga trail calls, to finish up the old railroad right-of-way stretch between Foye and Reliez Station, parking midway at Hawthorne, from the former to the latter's view of
Mt. Diablo North Peak,
back on Beechwood,
via deer,
the shaddowy dying light of the Lafayette Ridge, and a
quixotic cat, orchestrating and composing respectively two more pages (begun at rehearsal) of King David: XX. Passacaglia of Sex and Death and Psalms of David: Psalm 51: 5-19) upon return.
