And She's A Bigger Diva

Oh my dear Lord, what a day Thursday was. All morning and early afternoon it was so nice. Then, around 3, the storms came and came and came. It was worse than when I had been sitting on the plane at LaGuardia last month. There was thunder and lightening and the rain just kept coming down. Since Deborah Voigt was performing in the Martin theatre and not the Pavilion, I figured I might as well still go, the trick was going to be finding a way to stay dry between when I would arrive at Ravinia and when the Martin's doors opened at 7:30-ish. I left work at 5 and got to Ravinia's gate around 6:15, having driven through debris strewn all over local streets in Niles and Skokie, crawled in traffic on 94, then swam down the flooded out Dundee Road and partially flooded Green Bay Road. I didn't want to pull into the lot and then just sit in my car because there was still so much lightening and all those trees scatered around the lot would just be tempting fate. So, I kept going into downtown Highland Park and pulled into a parking lot at the train station. I figured I would wait for the rain to let up and then go eat somewhere, and then head back to Ravinia after the doors to the Martin were open. I didn't really want to eat at Ravinia's restaurants and spend that kind of money, and there's no indoor seating if you just grab something from the café, which is what I normally do. Well, the storms did not blow over. I sat in my car until 7:30 and just watched the lightening and rain continue. I listened to WFMT and there was no mention of the concert being cancelled, so at 7:30 I pulled out of the train station and went back to Ravinia. There were maybe 10 other cars in the lot, so I was able to take my pick of spots and stayed away from the trees and lampposts and on the gravel covered area so that I wouldn't get flooded out or stuck in a rut with my wheels spinning after the concert. At that point the rain finally died down to a drizzle, but the thunder and lightening were still substantial. I grabbed and umbrella and ran in, and got my seat in the almost deserted theatre. There were maybe 30 people in there, it was very sad, especially since it was sold out. Debbie waited until about 8:15 and by that time it was closer to half full, and by intermission it was about three-quarters full, so I'm glad she had a decent audience since it was a fabulous show. It was her and a piano on the stage and the intimacy really worked for her. She looked stunning in an elegant black dress (note to Covent Garden: she CAN pull it off) and she really played to the audience. She is definitely the best sporano performing today, I've seen both her and Renee Fleming in concert and in performances and Debbie V definitely is the better of the two. The best part of the concert was four songs by Respighi which she filled with so much emotion. I also enjoyed her five songs by Verdi and out of the seven songs by Bernstein, I really liked It's Gotta Be Bad to be Good and Somewhere. She also showed a lot of grace when some asshole's cell phone went off twice. She has such a great stage presence. The show was so great the audience called her back for four encores, in which she got to also show off her piano playing skills, and ended with a phenomenal Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, much bouncier and more full of joy than Heather's version on Monday. It ended up being such a fantastic show I was so glad I dealt with the weather and went. I had been exhausted, irritated, and hungry when the show began and she was so fantastic I totally forgot about all of that. Not even Cher was able to do that. Afterward, the rain had stopped and I was able to get home fairly easily except for a few traffic lights being out after I got off the expressway, but at that time of night it didn't create too much of a backup. Tomorrow it's Patti and Audra, the biggest divafest yet!