Flautopiccolo

NEGASS put together a Princess Ida sing-a-long with a full orchestra Sunday afternoon, at Christ Lutheran Church in Natick. We’d been to their Mikado sing-a-longs in 2008 and 2016, when they were co-sponsored with Longwood Opera in Needham and just had a pianist, and in 2025 with a full orchestra. I brought our new Princess Ida vocal score but Joe and I each borrowed one from NEGASS. Their scores included the dialogue but ours didn’t.

We sat towards the front and it was a lot of fun to sing the choruses with a solid wall of sound behind us. We were again very impressed with the quality of the voices. We’d only seen Princess Ida once, decades ago on our old black and white tv, so we were very unfamiliar with the operetta.

Here is the cast:

King Hildebrand – Dave Leigh
Hilarion – Gabriel Ellsworth
Cyril – Ann Ferentz
Florian – David Smyth
King Gama – John Freedman
Arac – Laurie Weissbrot
Guron – Ben Morse
Scynthius – Santo Mammone
Princess Ida – Elaine Crane
Lady Blanche – Opal Hearst
Lady Psyche – Sara DeLong
Melissa Lindsey – Buccella
Sacharissa – Michelle Markus
Chloe – TBA
Ada – Andrew Conway

And here is a picture of Hilarion, Florian and Cyril.