On Friday, November 21, the Upper St. Clair High School Chanteclairs welcomed community members to the Madrigal Dinner at Westminster Presbyterian Church. The USCHS Chanteclairs is a choral group composed of sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
The Chanteclairs host the Madrigal Dinner every year. It is a night filled with food and entertainment. The singers dress in traditional medieval costumes and perform an original skit while their audience dines.
Even though the students preserve the Gothic characteristics of the skit from year to year, they write a new script with a different theme for every performance. The theme of the performance this year was super-heroism. While most of the Chanteclairs collaborated to write the script, the mastermind behind the theme was senior Ben Nadler. He says, “There were a lot of midnight writing sprees, but the script would not have been as funny and clever if we had not worked together. The collaborative effort shone through in [our] performance.”
As guests arrived for the dinner, heralds declared their passage. Guests then found their seats and mingled. Once the guests were seated, the Chanteclairs proceeded into the room while singing “Veni, Veni Emmánuel.”
After the Chanteclairs found their respective seats, the skit commenced, and the singers became superheroes. During the beginning of the skit, the superheroes fought with one another and criticized their colleagues’ superpowers. However, Stan Lee, one of the 28 superheroes, switched everyone’s powers to force his fellow defenders to respect and understand one another.
Between dinner and dessert, the Chanteclairs also delighted their audience by singing medieval tunes, including “Flaming Pudding Carol,” “Gloucestershire Wassail,” and “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.”
Francesca Cappetta, a senior, loved singing “Veni, Veni Emmánuel” the most because “the song is such a popular tradition, and I wanted to sing it before I even became a Chanteclair.”
The evening concentrated on the Chanteclairs and their performance, but musicians throughout the high school participated in the production. Members of Upper St. Clair High School’s Clarion Choir and Men’s Ensemble dressed as serfs and served the guests. Ladies from Clarion Choir sang “Deck the Halls” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and gentlemen from Men’s Ensemble sang “Natus est nobis” and “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch.”
The guests and the performers loved “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” because Mr. Beck, one of Upper St. Clair High School’s Assistant Principals, participated in the performance. The men changed the lyrics of the well-known song by substituting “Mr. Beck” for “Mr. Grinch.”
Senior Morgan Hogenmiller states, “I think the song stole the show!”
The Chanteclairs started preparing for the Madrigal Dinner over the summer. They received their music in August and began practicing their harmonies. The students started to have more comprehensive rehearsals in October.
The group routinely meets on Tuesday from 2:30 p.m. until 4:00 p.m., but as the Madrigal Dinner neared, they rehearsed until 5:00 p.m. On the night before the dinner, the Chanteclairs gathered in Fellowship Hall to put up decorations and practice the skit for the last time without a live audience.
According to Cappetta, rehearsal proved worthwhile: “The rehearsals may have seemed tedious, but after the dinner came to an end, I wanted to perform again!”