Peter and the Wolf

Sydney came home from school last week begging us to go see the free concert featuring Peter and the Wolf by the Billings Symphony Orchestra. We would never have heard the end of it if she didn't get to go. All Saturday morning it was, "when are we going. I want to go to Peter and the Wolf." When I asked her what it was, she said it was a CD. So I asked, "We are going somewhere to listen to a CD?" "No, we are going to go get a CD for free." I had to explain to her what the orchestra was and what we really were going to see, just a bunch of people playing instruments, but she was still excited.

So we braved the cold (around 0 degrees) and headed out to the concert. We waited outside the theater for 10 minutes or so. I know, boo-hoo! But it was cold! Anyway, they finally started the concert with The Marriage of Fiagaro and Sydney leaned over and asked "Is this Peter and the Wolf?" I told her no, that it was coming and to enjoy the pretty song while we wait. She instantly crossed her arms and stuck her bottom lip out through the whole song. Tara, by-the-way, was having a great time. They had an actor there dressed up like a janitor that was doing some type of Charlie Chaplin routine before the show and between songs.

Then next song was something like The Sounds of Romania by some Russian composer that traveled the world listen to and recording music from all over the world and later incorporated it into his pieces. This was some sort of gypsy piece. Sydney again asked me if it was Peter and the Wolf and when I told her "no", she pouted through the whole song again.

Finally, they announced Peter and the Wolf, Sydney shot straight up and Tara was ecstatic to see that her Janitor was actually the narrator of the story. He stripped his jumpsuit off and revealed his traditional Russian garb below. As they went through the story, one by one, a few high school kids came out in simple costumes to play the parts of Peter, the bird, cat, duck, and the hunters. The narrator played Grandpa and the wolf. The kids really had a blast although Tara was really concerned about the Duck and asked how the duck got out of the wolf's stomach. We tried lying to her and telling her that the wolf burped her out. Tara didn't buy it so we just let it go.

I know that's a freaky picture but that came straight from the Symphony Orchestra website.

Anyway, afterwords, we tried to walk over to the Downtown Wendy's for frosties. Yeah, we were frozen but still wanted frosties. Go figure. The Wendy's was closed so we hiked back up to the car and drove to the next closest Wendy's and froze our tails off in the cold dining room while eating our frozen treats. They were good though!