The Cuenca Symphony put on a free Conciertos Navidenos (Christmas Concert) tonight, so we decided to go see them. We had passed the theater many times while walking in the past couple months, but never realized what it was.  They were playing at the University theater, about 6 blocks from our apartment.

The announcement said that the show started at 7:00, so we got there about 6:40.  To our surprise, the doors were not open yet.  Even more surprising, we saw symphony players entering the theater as late as 6:45.  We figured we must have been wrong about the time.

Nope. At 6:50 the doors opened, and the show started at 7:00. I have never seen such an organized and quickly filled theater.  I estimate the capacity at approximately 1000 people, and it was roughly 2/3 filled tonight.

There were 14 pieces played in the hour-long program, only three of which I recognized. After four instrumental-only tunes, Veronica Tola came out as a vocalist. After three songs, she was joined by Jorge Regalado, and the remainder of the program included their duets.

All in all, a very enjoyable short evening.