Christmas Eve, or Carols by Candlelight
Aline writes: We celebrated Christmas Eve by attending Carols by Candlelight at the Royal Albert Hall. The Royal Albert hall is an amazing space – we were lucky enough to have fabulous seats that actually swiveled around to face the stage!
As you can see, it was a jolly affair, as all the performers were dressed in 18th century dress, and we all had Santa hats.
It was a wonderful mixture of classical music and sing-along Christmas carols. And this brings up something I have been astounded at – did you know that even though we share many of the same Christmas carols with the English, we don’t always use the same tune? I have attended several sing-along Christmas carol events in the last month, and when I open my mouth to sing – I then realize that everyone else is singing a different tune. For example, Away in the Manager here has a tune that sounds like a Shaker hymn. Fortunately by the time we got to the Royal Albert Hall, I had already embarrassed myself at enough other venues such as Trafalgar Square so that I was prepared to let others start and then follow along. I wonder how this happened?
It was a splendid festive evening, since despite the fancy dress and wigs, the conductor kept up a steady patter of truly bad puns and jokes. But the fun didn’t end there! As you can see from the picture below, we managed to spread cheer throughout London after the concert too. I hope you all had as merry a Christmas Eve as we did!
As you can see, it was a jolly affair, as all the performers were dressed in 18th century dress, and we all had Santa hats.
It was a wonderful mixture of classical music and sing-along Christmas carols. And this brings up something I have been astounded at – did you know that even though we share many of the same Christmas carols with the English, we don’t always use the same tune? I have attended several sing-along Christmas carol events in the last month, and when I open my mouth to sing – I then realize that everyone else is singing a different tune. For example, Away in the Manager here has a tune that sounds like a Shaker hymn. Fortunately by the time we got to the Royal Albert Hall, I had already embarrassed myself at enough other venues such as Trafalgar Square so that I was prepared to let others start and then follow along. I wonder how this happened?
It was a splendid festive evening, since despite the fancy dress and wigs, the conductor kept up a steady patter of truly bad puns and jokes. But the fun didn’t end there! As you can see from the picture below, we managed to spread cheer throughout London after the concert too. I hope you all had as merry a Christmas Eve as we did!
posted by Bill | 11:41 PM
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