CHORUS ACROSS THE SEA
DAILY LOCAL NEWS
Westchester, Pennsylvania
Thursday, April 24, 2003
David Coghlan can carry a tune. Three weeks ago he carried one down his Grubbs Mill Road driveway to the Philadelphia International Airport, aboard an Aeroflot Airlines jet to Moscow, past Kremlin fortifications, onto the Kremlin Palace Stage, in front of 6,000 people.
In a white tie and tales, Coghlan sang in Russian after learning to pronounce and memorize a program’s worth. Coghlan took a class in Russian once, but that was 60 years ago.
It was just another day in 1998 when the retired Foote Mineral Co. chemical engineer opened his mail and found an invitation to join the newly formed Yale Alumni Chorus. “It didn’t take me a moment to decide to join,” says Coghlan.
A member of Yale University’s class of 1941, the former glee club member found time in his busy life to answer a call to help build cultural bridges in the former Soviet Republic. And that entailed more than just a week in Russia.
“We had to pay our own way. There must have been 200 hours of preparation,” said West Whiteland resident Coghlan, seated near a grand piano in his living room. (Wife Carolyn is the pianist in the house.)
As somber Russian music spilled out of an adjoining room, Coghlan explained how an American, Constantine Orbelian, had succeeded in becoming director of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and had envisioned Yale’s alumni chorus as the perfect accompaniment to a performance by international opera star Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
However, Orbelian insisted that the Yale chorus sing Russian songs in Russian. Coghlan’s chorus director, perhaps aware that cultural bridges can be built without adhering strictly to prima-donna architecture, suggested to chorus members at one rehearsal, according to Coghlan, “If you haven’t learned the words, learn how to mouth it.”
Describing the palace’s “shell-shaped hall with highly developed lighting,” Coghlan said, “I had never seen a stage so deep.” The hall was devoid of viewing boxes for dignitaries: Russia’s proletariat government had built the concert hall for the working class.
Nearly 60 years after being deferred from WWII military service because he was needed to supervise a TNT plant, Coghlan was on a Moscow stage, singing Russian patriotic songs, commemorating Russian and American soldiers fighting together in the “Great War.” As he sang, “Soldiers walking over the dusty road, through the steppe, through the cold and anxiety,” American soldiers fought in Baghdad. Coghlan noted, “Moscow is in the same time zone as Baghdad.”
As the concert closed, Coghlan and 100 fellow alumni performed “My Russia,” an encore which inspired the crowd to its feet and thousands of voices to song. Sharing the moment was United States Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow (Yale Class of ’74), in a white tie and tails borrowed from a chorus member who had become ill. To Coghlan, it was in interesting note of American improvisation in Moscow. David Coghlan recounted how he has performed in musical comedies in Arden, Del., sung with Brandywiners Chorus at Longwood Gardens, performed and produced with the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Chester County, acted with the Wilmington Drama League, and is, to this . . .