BBC Proms

Mark and I went to see the Proms last night. Not prom, mind you, promS. I assure you the difference is considerable. To sum it up, every year BBC sponsors a month of constant concerts, generally classical with a few jazz tossed in for good measure. Each night's concert is different, with different pieces being performed by different people. The performances take place at Royal Albert Hall and the whole series ends in the somewhat famous 'last night of the Proms', where the so called best performers (not sure if its the BBC Philharmonic, some sort of Royal ensemble or national ensemble) play patriotic songs and fireworks go off and such.

Last night's performance did not include any explosions. After leafing through about a gazillion different performance possibilities, we (and I mean me, Mark was getting his haircut at the time) picked a performance of a Rachmaninov symphony and an excerpt from a Puccini opera, to be performed by the BBC Philharmonic (because who doesn't like their harmonies nicely 'phil'ed?). Given the sheer number of concerts in the series, you can get tickets for relatively cheap, ours were carefully chosen in the last row, facing straight down the stairs so Mark could have unlimited leg room. Tickets were £10.

We got there a little over half an hour before the performance started, fresh from dinner at Whole Foods. We climbed up three flights of stairs, took a peak inside, went 'oooh', then spent about ten minutes figuring out if we wanted to get anything to drink as we didn't have any cash and there was a £10 minimum for using card, then we finally ordered drinks for then as well as intermission. It worked out nicely. I must say that while very cool, Royal Albert Hall wasn't quite as big nor as fancy as I was expecting it to be. The center of the main floor area had a fountain in the middle of it and no seats, like the mosh pit at a rock concert. A lot of people seemed to be on board with this idea and the area was relatively full. You could also stand at the very top in the gallery to watch.

I must say I thought the symphony portion quite good. It was a tune I hadn't heard before and while of course not whole-heartedly captivating, enjoyable over all. The opera bit was a little odd. Being of course, not an opera, there was no staging of any kind. The singers came out to the front of the stage, exited and entered the stage as their characters would, and stood and sat down as apparently necessary. However, this is what got me at least, we had no idea what was going on. If you spent extra money on the program you were able to follow along what they were saying word for word. This seems a bit of a cop out to me, like charging extra for subtitles when you go to a foreign film. As a result, I found it a little boring and was a bit relieved when it finally ended! Overall I was quite pleased with my first Proms and Royal Albert Hall experience. As an extra note, I was also pleased with my burrito bar experience at Whole Foods, there were black beans, chipotle chicken and guacamole!