Fellowship of the Ring with live orchestra

Last night I headed over to Wolf Trap to see Fellowship of the Ring performed with a live orchestra. They had it for two consecutive nights, and I was planning on getting a lawn ticket for the night with the best weather, but a discount email ticket list came up with Thursday loge seats for half off, and that was the clincher. I was solo, as not only was Jill coming home from her second 12 hour shift, but it’s also the first movie we saw together – and she slept through most of it and never saw the others.

It was very interesting. They had two screens, one overhanging the stage and on hanging from the back of the loge for the folks on the lawn. My seat was in the first row of the upper loge, slightly stage right, almost perfect. The film was shown with subtitles, which was sometimes distracting (I often feel like I’m “reading” a movie when they’re enabled) but occasionally necessary, as the orchestra would swell over a line of dialogue (I also noticed that the subtitles were very complete, containing dialogue you can barely hear normally). Most disconcerting was the audience applauding soloists – normal for a classical concert, but sometimes I was so immersed in the movie, I wasn’t paying attention to the music and the applause was startling. Which is a bit of a shame as the musicians were talented and it was perfectly synced to the movie, but I didn’t always notice them because they were doing such a good job – but what else could they have done?

It was a long evening, even though they aired the theatrical version. I was getting tired and cold, and left right as the battle with the Uruk-hai started, and it was past three hours in. Anyway, I enjoyed myself greatly and would go see it (or the other two) again anytime. For that matter, I think I’ll be watching the sequels soon. There are pictures and a write up for the previous night here.