Beethoven's Last Night

On the first of April I surprised Dan with a trip into Boston.  I had received an email alert about tickets for Trans-Siberian Orchestra's inaugural performance of Beethoven's Last Night.  All I knew about them was that Dan and I enjoyed hearing the one Christmas song that gets played over and over again at Christmas time (what you should be hearing right now if your volume is turned on) but I thought it sounded like fun.  So I ordered two tickets (Fred had a church meeting that he was in charge of that night so he couldn't go with us - in hindsight it was a good thing, it was not his type of music!).

We started by catching the "T" (the subway) into Boston.  The first order of business was to find a restaurant to eat at.  I wanted to go to "Finale", a fancy appetizer and dessert place that I read rave reviews about.  Dan didn't really think it looked like a good "dinner" place so we kept looking.  We finally found the perfect place - MJ O'Connors - an Irish pub/restaurant (Dan is into anything Irish lately, I'm not sure why).

We entered and besides a couple of people at the bar, we were the only patrons.  Great atmosphere and the waiter and bartender actually had Irish accents.  We decided what we wanted - Dan chose the meatloaf dinner and I chose macaroni and cheese.  WELL - when they were brought out, we were surprised at how large the portions were.  Dan's meatloaf was 4" by 4" and 1 1/2" thick on a piece of 1" thick bread with 1" of mashed potatoes on top.  My macaroni and cheese was flowing over the sides of the dish.  Neither of us could finish our meal, and much to Dan's disappointment, we couldn't even take home our leftovers since we were out for the rest of the evening on one of the hottest days of the year so far.



We left our not so empty plates behind and headed out to walk over to the theatre district.  By this point Dan figured we were going to a show, but he didn't have any idea about which one.  We finally made it to the theatre and got into the line.  Dan read the marquis and I was happy to find that he was somewhat excited about seeing the performance.  "Mom, did you realize that Aunt Wendy gave me this CD for Christmas?"  "Um, no, I didn't realize that.  Do you like it?"  "Yeah, it's great." 

We finally made it to our seats, which were FANTASTIC - not too close but not far away either.  Silly me, when I ordered the tickets, I thought TSO was a small orchestra that rocked up (is that the right term?) classical music.  I was surprised to learn the day before the show that it's really a ROCK band that rocks up classical music.   Their website says they play rock opera.  The music starts with one piano playing a simple Beethoven melody for about 30 seconds then BAM!  the guitars, the drums, the electric violins join in as lights start flashing all around us.  Before hitting the play button on the short video below, scroll to the bottom of this post to pause the Christmas music that is playing.  After the video, scroll back down and play the 2nd piece of music, one of the songs from the show.



The story was incredible, the show was amazing and the music was fantastic.  We were told many times that cameras were not allowed and people still took pictures and videos even though the security people kept coming out into the audience telling them to stop.  I didn't take any pictures of the show, even though I REALLY wanted to, but I don't think that I could have captured the awesomeness of the performance anyway.

After 3 hours the show finally ended (no intermission either!) and we were on our way, arriving home about midnight.  If you have the opportunity to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I highly recommend it.
Click here if you want to go the their website and read the story of Beethoven's Last Night (including narration and lyrics).

1.  good food

2.  incredible performances

3.  a son that puts up with me