Singalong Sound of Music at Snape

Serendipity adds spice to life and resulted in my finding myself at the Maltings at Snape in Suffolk last night, singing along with the Sound of Music. The outing was the result of a chance conversation with my old friends (Baroness) Ros Scott and her husband Mark Valladares when were standing in Republic Square in Yerevan, Armenia, earlier this year, watching a sound-and-lights display  by the fountains. In the middle of a medley of familiar tunes both classic and modern came a snatch from The Sound of Music, which prompted both Ros and I to declare that one thing we’d always wanted to do was to go to a singalong version. The one I’d heard of in the past was at a cinema off Leicester Square in London. But when Ros returned home, she discovered that the Maltings at Snape — usually a venue for serious music — was putting on a singalong concert version. Spooky. It was too good an opportunity to miss (especially as it gave me the chance of seeing Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears’ home town of Aldeburgh first). So after an excellent meal at an adjacent gastropub we joined several hundred other people, dozens of whom were dressed as nuns, quite a number as brown paper packages tied with string and one group cleverly outfited as a herd of goats. It sounds kitsch, I know, but it was fun. Moreover, the quality of the music was really rather good, with an excellent trio providing the backing and the Aldeburgh Singers the Abbey choir. The rest of us went through a rehearsal during the first half of the programme, then in the second half we sang the thing right through. Brill! And deliciously, Britishly bonkers.