Allen Smith wrote:

>I was playing in a performance of Don Giovanni and when the conductor
>asked for a mandolin player I volunteered.  I then went to the back of a
>closet and pulled out my dad's Gibson - MIT Mandolin Club, class of 1919.
>...  $300.00 and a month later I finally retrieved the instrument and
>discovered that I could not play the darn thing.  My fingers kept landing
>on the frets which are the same place your fingers go on the violin.  I was
>unable to conquer that problem in time (3 days), and ended up pizzing on
>the violin - much to my embarassment.

Mine is a similar experience.  I first came across the mandolin while I
was at school.  I joined a Bush Band (Australian folk music) and one of
the members played the mandolin.  He informed me that it was the same as
the violin and when he left I bout myself a mandolin to give me something
different to do throughout the night.  When I left home to study at the
Conservatorium, the mandolin stayed home and I hardly touched it.  Seven
years later I was asked to play violin in the orchestra for Don Giovanni.
As we were taking the production on a tour through provincial Queensland
the orchestra was very small.  No brass - so this along with harpsichord
and mandolin was played on synthesiser by the conductor.  I had previously
offered to the conductor to try playing the mandolin part as I had access
to a friends, but for various reasons he decided against it.  We then had
trouble with the synthesiser in one of the towns.  The conductor then told
me that he had wished he had got me to bring the mandolin along.  I then
said that mine was in the next town (my home town) and could try it out at
the next performance.  I practised those 44 bars like crazy for the next
24hrs (after having replaced the old rusty strings) and performed it.
Nobody knew that it was going to happen because the conductor only gave me
the OK at interval.  The vocalist singing the role of DG was very pleased
and I have performed this many times now as well as some of the ones that
I mentioned.  The biggest being the Romeo and Juliet for the Monte Carlo
Ballet when they were in town Amazing how easily some people can be fooled.

Matthew Gillett