But the singers, conscientious toward text and blend, rose to the occasion in climactic numbers like a "Hallelujah" chorus partly obscured by the slow rumble of audience members standing up according to tradition.
To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising volume of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline.
And team they were — not a consortium of superstars, but a smooth blend of rising stars and nonstars, of rejects and never-beens, modestly compensated by Yankees and Red Sox standards, but hard-working and well-anchored by a staff of awesome starting pitchers, all in their 20s.
That's why the price of Ural Blend has risen even faster than global prices generally.
But at last week's closing of $114, the price of each of those barrels of Ural crude, the country's main export blend, has risen 24 percent since the beginning of the year.
This year's headliners -- Andre Agassi, Lindsay Davenport, John McEnroe, Andy Roddick, James Blake, Mark Philippoussis, Max Mirnyi, Amanda Coetzer, Meghann Shaughnessy and Alexandra Stevenson -- give the nine-team professional league a blend of established and rising stars.
In recent years, the vineyards here have produced award-winning varietals and blends, making Colorado a rising star in the wine-making universe.
The sheets of rain sinking from above blended with the water rising from below while winds of 100 miles per hour roared, tossing and rinsing the 28-year-old Richards as though she were trapped inside a giant washing machine.
His task is to take a group of aging, predominantly South American players, blend them with fresh and rising youngsters, and sustain the unsustainable.
This successful blend of community cohesion and rising wealth has been undermined in recent months by a spate of reports concerning anti-Muslim attitudes.
