SOUND OF MUSIC

One of the facts which came to light while rummaging through family history material was the discovery that my mother had been a singer. I knew she sang, because I can recall after the Second World War going with my father to a concert version of The Messiah in which she was in the ladies' chorus. But among the papers left by my sister were two flimsy programmes which proved that, before the War, she had been more than a member of the chorus. Indeed, she had been a member of a local amateur concert party, and a soloist. The programmes even listed the songs she sang.
This was something of a revelation, and it helped to explain how I acquired my own interest in music - classical and swing - which was forged, first, by listening to bands on the wireless, then to gramophone records. It also helped to explain why, at work in Spalding and at a loose end in the evenings, I applied to join the town's operatic society.
Unable to read music scores (I learned the tunes and words by rote), this was once again a 'back row of the chorus' job, but it suited me fine, and we went into rehearsal for Sigmund Romberg's The Desert Song in which, switching rapidly from Riffs to French Legionnaires, we wore rough 'arabic' robes, dark facial make-up, dustings of Fuller's Earth, and stiff army uniforms. It was great fun, and we did a week of shows at the Corn Exchange.
Twelve months' later I changed jobs and was now in Norwich, working days and again at a loose end in the evenings. So, I somehow squeezed through auditions for the Norwich & Norfolk Operatic Society which, for a final time, had alternated its annual productions between the dilapidated old Hippodrome Theatre (where because there were not enough dressing-rooms they had to park caravans in the street) and the Theatre Royal, which also showed films.
The Norwich Society was also just beginning to emerge from a traumatic period in which it had finally turned its back on Gilbert & Sullivan - and lost some G&S enthusiasts in the process - and instead had begun to embrace the modern world. Except that it hadn't. Young members of the chorus wanted to do Oklahoma and South Pacific, but instead they got light opera, of the Romberg and Franz Kalman ilk.
More-over, they went directly into rehearsals for, you've guessed it, The Desert Song. So for me, and for a second successive year, it was rough costumes, dark face paint, and Fuller's Earth powder. This was followed, very successfully as far as I remember, by The Student Prince and then The Gypsy Princess. Then I had to drop out, having changed my work shifts. 
But I did enjoy it all, even the Fuller's Earth, because although it was tiring it was great fun in the back row of the men's chorus. And we did pick up new skills. In the desert, we learned how to do fast costume changes; in Kalman's cafe scenes we had to besport ourselves and behave badly in evening dress; while in Heidelberg it was marching up and down steps, singing, and keeping everything in time to the music and the movement of your feet. And that is difficult, if you've never tried it.
We also went to watch neighbouring societies do their stuff, and laughed at the story, probably apocryphal, of the music director who, dismayed by the on-stage grim and anxious faces of his nervous chorus, tried to lighten the atmosphere at one particular performance by rolling pickled onions across the stage.