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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ГРУДЕНЬ 200 8 21 Jurij Plevako Oransky composed by distinguished and famous composers or folksongs transformed by the maestro into music that soared to operatic heights, each note for each voice meticulously penned on paper by the man who trained us to turn the annotated sharps and flats into something that was miraculously beautiful. When he was satisfied with what we had accom- plished, we performed, sometimes locally and some- times far afield, sitting for hours in a bus to stand on a stage in another city and sing our hearts out. In those days, our concert apparel was austerely simple — girls wore white blouses and navy blue skirts and a large taffeta-like bows at our throats; boys in navy blue trousers and white shirts set off by navy blue bowties. We were taught how to stand and how to clasp our hands together at our waists as we sang, how to bow to acknowledge the applause, even what we were to sing after the inevitable “Encore!” demanded by the audience. In the years that followed, many of us followed Professor Oransky to a new practice venue, a room in a corner building in one of several Ukrainian enclaves in the City of Philadelphia. There was, as I recall, a small sign taped to the door of the building, identifying it as Ukrainian Music Institute. Here, the choir became a girls’ choir, the songs and stage costumes became more elaborate, the music even more complex and diverse. We began to sing opera — not the ubiquitous opuses of Wagner or Puccini — but opera written by Ukrainian composers on Ukrainian themes. But the songs I remember best were songs that reflected life in Ukrainian villages: a song about a crane creeping into an old woman’s patch of konopli, a sassy number about a young woman going to a market bazaar and spending her hard- earned money on a drink and a tune from a “dudnyk, and another about a young woman asking her mother to be patient because she could not weave quickly while missing her young man. There was a rather grizzly number about a rabbit en- croaching on a farmer’s garden, a warning to the rabbit to keep out or risk having his foot pierced by a stake, and an exuberant and spirited number about a peasant mowing hay and being called to dinner by a querulous wife who had prepared a pot of pepper- ed borshch she wanted him to eat before it got cold. Many of us who were involved with the choir still remember the words and the melodies that were painstakingly learned during rehearsals; now and again we sing them alone or in small groups, always smiling. And the elaborate masks created for the characters in Lysenko’s opera Pan Kotsky still hang in numerous closets and even on bedroom walls of the homes in which we grew up or the homes we now inhabit. Most of us also recall the professor as a stern taskmaster, one who did not suffer fools gladly. We were, by this time teenagers, a condition nearly synonymous with foolishness, and I laugh each time I remember the anger we were capable of inspiring. One fall afternoon, about a dozen of us had gathered for the weekly rehearsal at the Institute. The professor, usually punctual to a fault, was uncharacteristically late. Bored and impatient, we stood before the locked door for a while and then ambled up the street to a mom and pop grocery store at the other corner. Pooling our meager funds, we bought several small packets of Planters salted nuts and ambled back down to the Institute, just as Professor Oransky was opening the door. When he saw us munching on our salted nuts, he slammed and locked the door and sent us packing with an earful of admonitions about the incompatibility of nuts and the human voice. There was no rehearsal that day, and never again did any of us dare to make the same mistake. The dietary lessons, however, continued — at the next rehearsal the professor lectured us on taboo foods that were never to be consumed before a rehearsal or, God forbid, before a concert. And it was at these concerts that we found our greatest joy, especially during those exquisite
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