The oldest choral festival in North America will celebrate its 150th birthday next year. It came frightfully close to reaching that awesome landmark without me ever having been present at a single performance. Both it and I were spared what would have been a truly embarrassing occurrence by my attendance on Friday. I am speaking, of course, of Cincinnati’s May Festival which was first held in 1873.

The venue was Cincinnati’s Music Hall. The festival and building have an interesting and possibly unique relationship with the event actually being responsible for the existence of the structure. Before the May Festival became an annual event in 1967 it was generally held every other year. The first two were in 1873 and 1875. Both were held in a large building called Saengerfest Hall. Rain was a minor problem in 1873 and became a major one in 1875. It wasn’t that patrons got wet but that they could not hear the music during the brief time that it fell in 1873 or the much longer period of rainfall in 1875. Amplified by the tin roof of Saengerfest Hall, the rain forced the performance to be paused. It also gave rise to a project to construct the brick building that has been home to the festival since 1878.

Only one of this year’s four major performances fit into my schedule. It turned out to be probably the worst fit for my tastes. There are many things that divide the world’s population and one of them is opera. I am a member of the unappreciative group. But, even though it’s quite likely I would have enjoyed a different program more, there was much to enjoy in Friday’s performance. And I did. For one thing, I believe it was the first time I had ever watched a composer conduct his own composition. I guess John Adams conducting El Niño could be considered the black-tie version of a more-familiar-to-me performance by a singer-songwriter. As always, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra sounded superb and the 100+ voices of the May Festival Chorus sounded as wonderful as I’d hoped. The main chorus sat through long periods of inactivity then rose in unison to sing. Each of them held a copy of the libretto so that their risings had the appearance of a large flock of attacking seagulls. I found myself enjoying that more than I probably should have.

Before the concert, I walked a few blocks from Music Hall to enjoy another Cincinnati tradition. Scotti’s isn’t quite as old as the May Festival but it’s working on it. After studying the stuffed menu for some time, I went with Lasagna Ala Don Giovanni.