In my life, I have oft been present in a theatre or other venue when standing ovations have been proferred by an audience as the sincerest form of appreciation said audience could offer to performers who have entertained them, and perhaps moved them and touched them during the preceding couple of hours.
The standing "O" should be a rare and special appreciation, reserved for very special tributes to artistry on stage. It is cheapened when it becomes a sort of Pavlovian response, due on every occasion, almost demanded from an audience as a ritual of attendance.
And I have been present on occasions when it was undeserved, when the performance on stage was pedestrian to the point of boredom.
But I have seldom participated in a standing "O" as spontaneous, as prolonged and so richly deserved as the one that erupted when the last notes of Carmina Burina faded away in the glorious ambience of St. Mary's Church at Indian River on the evening of July 3.
It is a remarkable and joyful thing to have the spirit lifted and caressed by a work of true artistic merit and worth. That is what happened communally that evening as the Indian River Festival launched its summer season.
The church was full. On stage, an 80 voice choir recruited from singers from across the province, and conducted by Moncton University Professor Monique Richard, sent its glorious and full sound bouncing off the vaulted ceilings conceived by Island architect William Harris (the family calls him Uncle Willie), pushed by six percussionists and dual pianists Peter Tiefenbach and Robert Kortgaard.
The work is an unusual "scenic cantata" written by Carl Orff (1895 - 1982), once dismissed by his critics as "a rich man's banjo player", who combined lyrics in Latin, old French, and German he found in a Bavarian monastery, with his own offbeat rhythmic sense.
So what is it about Mr Orff's artistic vision that so completely enthralls an audience of a Sunday evening in summer on this island of lush greenery.
Excellence, that's what. And artistic honesty.
The cool competence of conductor Monique Richard, taking and blending those voices, two pianists and six percussionists, controlling and cueing her communal instrument with all the aplomb of someone winding their watch. I tell you, when 80 voices become as one, there is a powerful presence at work.
Mr Orff, should he have been eavesdropping from the heavens, would have felt he was done proud.
At my age, I am tough to thrill. I was thrilled.
When he isn't playing piano, Robert Kortgaard is the artistic director of the Indian River Festival, which now has blossomed from its roots in what we term "classical" music, to adventures in the blues with the likes of Matt Andersen, whose talent is larger than his bulk, which is saying something, to the winsome Meaghan Blanchard, more conventionally and pleasantly curved, and whose talent is just beginning to take her to the stratosphere.
The word is eclectic, I believe, ranging through musical tastes which have in common, performers and exponents whose commitment to what they do is genuine, say, like Ron Hynes and Angele Arsenault, both more poet than songwriter.
But if the communal voices can stir the soul, what of the ability of a single voice and a bare stage and the talent of a middle aged woman clad in demure school girl attire of blue blazer and grey flannel skirt, white shirt and necktie, to conjure up images of her schoolgirl's life in Scotland.
This is what Maja Ardal is doing six nights a week at the Victoria Playhouse (she has Monday night off) until July 17. The one woman show is entitled "The Cure For Everything", the second part of a three play triology. The first, "You Fancy Yourself," she brought to us last year." We can only hope she will bring the final piece to us as well, sometime in the henceforth.
Whether it is Derek Jeter hitting a home run to become the first New York Yankee to whack 3,000 hits, or Michael Jordan doing almost anything on a basketball court, or Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring that triumphant goal, it is equally exciting to see a performer at the peak of his/her chosen craft.
So it is with Maja Ardal and "The Cure For Everything".
She has been honing her game for 40 years as a playwright, performer and director, and the evidence is all there as she takes us into and through her puberty hood and more, growing up in her native heath.
In the course of her ninety minute oral diary, she is by turns her girlish self, a nasty old woman, the obstreperous butcher she worked for, and many other voices including the pleasureless lad who takes her virginity and immediately falls asleep.
She is funny, she is wistful, she is self deprecating and she is sad. She is amazing.
There is a lovely rhythm to her storytelling in a gentle Scottish tongue that takes you by the heart and never lets you go.
This is true and masterful artistry at play.
Masterful. Her standing "O" from the opening night crowd was well deserved.
Victoria Playhouse and St. Mary's Church at Indian River, two of my favourite places to be in summertime PEI, with the Montgomery Theatre in Rustico still to come.
The artistic visions differ, but the honesty is always present.
That's the view from here.