Volume 25 Issue 6 - March 2020

(and suggesting answers) about the relationships we cannot afford
to take for granted in regard to the continually evolving relationship
between artists and audiences.
Part of the reason it was so interesting is the pivotal moment in
the history of film that is at one and the same time the reason for
the film’s existence and it’s own major storyline – the advent of the
talking picture. Stars of the silent screen died off, metaphorically, in
droves; new stars were born; actors who could actually act, singers
who could actually sing, and dancers who could actually dance were
suddenly able to bring prodigious live performance skills to a mass
audience. Studios acquired orchestras where previously movie houses
had theatre organs or player pianos. Sound stages on an immense
scale came into existence.
Memorably, February 8 in the RTH balcony, I found the inner story
of the film being played out all over again, in a crazed, Escher-like
version of itself: as though the fun-house mirrored twists and turns of
Roy Thomson Hall’s intentionally disorienting lobbies and levels had
been transported into the auditorium itself.
There was one moment, for example, where I found myself
watching the TSO live on the RTH stage (with a pull-down movie
screen most of them could not see above their heads), making beautifully
synchronized music for an orchestra on the screen, reduced
once again to silent-movie puppetry by technology’s latest twist and
turn; while, to top it all off, on that screen an auditorium of people
sat watching their orchestra accompanying the same stars that our
orchestra was. Layers within layers.
There was a more fundamental moment for me, though, well into
the movie’s second half. (Yes, there was an intermission to top up on
popcorn and beer.)
It came during one of the film’s memorable songs – not one of the
obvious ones, like the title song, that had dozens of audience members
happily singing along, but “Would You” a lovely gentle waltz, masterfully
positioned at the film’s moment of denouement, ricochetting
from bathos to pathos, in a lovely arc:
He holds her in his arms,
would you, would you?
He tells her of her charms,
would you, would you?
I suddenly became aware that the person seated next to me was
singing, completely comfortably and absorbed entirely in the moment.
Not “singing along,” just singing. Not an audience member “joining
in.” Nor aware, even for an instant, that she herself had an audience.
Just feeling permitted.
And here’s the point: she would not have had that permission
either in a movie theatre or in a concert hall. It was a gifted moment,
arising from a uniquely oddball set of circumstances: the live audience
watching the live orchestra brought the people on the silver screen
to life in a way that film alone cannot. The privacy of the typical filmwatching
experience kept other audience members at bay, in a way
that the typical concert environment does not.
It’s an alchemy we all, artists and presenters alike, need to seek.
After all, if, as the bard says, “all the world’s a stage,” then what’s
an audience?
Three days later: Tuesday February 11, at the COC
“Oh, it’s a starry night!” my opera companion, delighted, turns to
me and says, very quietly, as the Hansel and Gretel overture starts and
the mysterious-looking panelled stage curtain we have been eyeing for
the past ten minutes or so, speculating as to how its panels will part
and divide, reveals what is behind it. Like lightning the person in the
row right in front of us spins around. Her “SSSSHHHHH!!!” can be
heard at least 15 rows back. Our slightly sheepish discomfort lasts all
of the three minutes it takes for the same individual to take things to
the next level by whacking the elbow of the person next to them with
a rolled up program, for encroaching over the midline of the seat arm.
Thirteen years ago, approximately
In the selfsame balcony at Roy Thomson Hall. It is a performance
of Bach’s St. John Passion. One of it’s great chorales “O grosse Lieb”
has just commenced and someone, I would guess in his 80s, deep in
the moment and alone with the music starts, quietly, to do what Bach
instructs – to sing along. Someone turns to chastise ...
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
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8 | March 2020 thewholenote.com