Monday 5 November 2012

Long weekend in Madrid. Attention Sound of Music fans.

Now I know there are armies of Sound of Music fans out there, who dress up as nuns or goatherds and attend sing-along concerts, or travel to Salzberg for Sound of Music tours. I'm not knocking this, I've done the Salzberg tour myself, albeit mainly to accompany my wife Linda, who is a bit of a 'fan'. (And no, I wasn't dressed as a goatherd. Or a nun.)



So I offer this posting for those Sound of Music fans who are truly addicted and need to experience every Sound of Music opportunity, even if it's in Spanish!


Sonrisas y Lágrimas (Smiles and Tears) is the Spanish title for the (Spanish language) Sound of Music musical which is currently playing to packed houses at the Coliseum Teatro on Gran Vía in Madrid. As I've already said, Linda's a bit of a fan, but you don't have to trust her (biased) view that it was excellent, I have to admit it myself, it was.


Neither of us speaks white-hot Spanish, so, while we could follow the spoken parts of the play pretty well, we did tend to get a little lost during the songs, as the translations of the lyrics had been tweaked somewhat to get them to scan comfortably with the music. 'Climb every mountain,' for example, was sung as 'Sube montañas,' (climb mountains), but none of this really mattered as the music was note-perfect to the original and played live by an excellent 8-piece orchestra. 

The cast were also superb. Silvia Luchetti as Maria simply was Julie Andrews circa 1965, until she opened her mouth and started speaking and singing in Spanish. The children also were very professional, all rosy-cheeks and breathless enthusiasm.


We're not great attenders of musicals, so this might be par-for-the-course now in the UK, but I was surprised to hear an announcement at the start to the effect that it was OK to take photos and video during the encore. So, if you're a real 'fan', here's something a little odd, just for you, 'Doe, a deer,' in Spanish.

Doe, a Deer encore, Madrid 2012


And if you listen carefully, you'll hear Linda singing along in English.

(I was too busy working the camera to join in, sorry.)


If you like the blog why not read the eBook? Zen Kyu Maestro, An English Teacher's Spanish Adventure available from Amazon. 
For a free sample chapter, click HERE.

 

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