possible Ben Hur SPOILER - nothing about the book here ...
so I went to Düsseldorf with Sabine
at the VIP entrance to the ISS Dome we were welcomed like VIPS
there was a guest list and I was on top (possibly because it was alphabetically) and had "guest of Stewart Copeland" written behind my name, which is fair
we were given a promotional folder with a German booklet about the production, some flyers and a CD-Rom with a Ben Hur Trailer, 4 Stewart tracks for Ben Hur Live, plus lots of pictures, production sketches, etc...
our path led is into the VIP area where we could eat tasty salads and stuff and drink something
at 5pm we were shown the backstage part of the production with stables, ships, costumes and props
some time after 6pm we were led into the arena and could choose a seat
Franz Abraham and the director held a short speech as to the circumstances of this semi-public rehearsal
then we saw Act 1 of Ben Hur Live, which lasted about an hour
this was basically the version I saw last week - with Stewart music and Stewart narration
this was still a rehearsal without costumes, sometimes a bicycle would replace a horse - no falcons yet
but everything went much more smoothly, no breaks for technical reasons
and the Ben Hur guy took a lot of his clothes off for the slave part - ladies, get a good look at him !
the sea battle had some added effects with dry ice, although that didn't really work
if it does it'll look great, though!
there was a dinner for partners after the rehearsal with more warm food (which we didn't attend, because it was a long day for both of us already), so we went home with our collected stuff
I'll upload some pictures on my flickr.com page soon:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18838092@N00/will send scans of the promotion CD-R to Raphael for his website and add the link here, too.
Dietmar
There's a small chance that the MSG shirt will be travelling with me as Gert might want to film stuff like this.
