Not so much the mythical waters of the Bible, although those were certainly described, but real-life water cascading from the ceiling.

The work began serenely enough, with Haydn's musical chaos and darkness upon the auditorium. The spirit of God was indeed moving over the face of the waters, for shortly after there was light, and the light was good, "a new-created world sprang up at God's command," and the sound of water began trickling in.

At first, people tried to ignore the sound, concentrating on the music. Then heads began to turn in exasperation, wondering what it was and just how many candy wrappers one human could possibly open.

Finally, with no guilty parties readily apparent, people began to whisper about "special effects." The angel Raphael was, after all, singing about "the gathering of waters" and "the boist'rous sea."

The music was too "effective" by far: Within minutes, steady streams of water, falling 30-plus feet to the balcony floor and splashing off ledges, drowned out all musical nuance.

Maestro Samuel Wong led on without missing a beat as ushers eddied about, moving people, bringing buckets, towels and 30-gallon trash cans to stem the flooding.

"Let the waters under heaven be gathered together to one place; and it was so ... and God saw that it was good."

The audience became utterly, thoroughly distracted, and intermission, usually a time for pleasant conversation, was abuzz with speculation.

One does not rewrite Haydn, so when the second half began, the soprano had no choice but to sing, "And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly ... " the rest of which was lost in gales of laughter.

The torrents subsided with the choir's " ... let us rejoice, let our song be the praise of God!" and Adam and Eve strode forth on a First Morning bejeweled with real dewdrops. The wonder of the evening was that not a drop could be heard by the final, triumphant ... and grateful ... "Amen!"

Of course, the leak was nothing more than an unexpected event. The real disaster was the damage it did to the concert, a concert for which 200 people spent months preparing. However entertaining the correspondence between text and flood, the musicians were terribly disappointed.

There is no fair way to critique a concert like this. All that can be said is that the musicians performed valiantly and well, their focus improving in the second half, a feat in and of itself.

Soloists Jennifer Aylmer (soprano: the angel Gabriel and Eve), Vale Rideout (tenor: the angel Uriel), and David Newman (baritone: the angel Raphael and Adam) delivered the story in strong, clear voices.

Aylmer, despite occasional unevenness in pitch, revealed a large, agile voice with a ringing tone that was especially beautiful in trills. Rideout proved to be the most consistent, easily heard, easily understood, and with a beautiful lyric voice. Newman also had a lovely voice, but lacked the edge necessary to wade through full orchestra plus waterfalls. The part also lay at the very bottom of his range, so that some of his most dramatic notes were lost to the depths. The three persevered commendably through it all.

Perhaps the concert's most innovative aspect, inspired by a performance several years back, was the addition of hula.

Kumu hula Michael Pili Pang and nine members of his Halau Hula Ka No'eau danced Part 1 of The Creation dressed in Victorian era costumes — with the women carrying parasols-turned-umbrellas.

People speculated that the dancers left after intermission because of the leaks, but in fact, Pang had been asked to create the dance only 10 weeks before the concert and was able to complete only the first four days of creation.

His choreography, part of his his thesis for a degree as master of fine arts, will be remounted at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, in March using recorded music.

Recorded music may actually work better by allowing the choreography to take center stage. On Friday night, the dancing had to compete with the music performance, and staging logistics placed the dancers in front of the vocal soloists, blocking them from view.

Music and dance distracted from one another, the whole being less than the sum of its constituent parts.

Pang forged a mixed genre, a type of interpretive dance founded in hula movement. Before the concert, he shared that he had expected to be inspired equally by text and music, but "felt the music had nothing to do with kahiko hula." He "used the text as a reference," he said, then took the music and "just went with it."

Justifications for juxtaposing Haydn's "Creation" and hula come easily — similarities in creation myths, many Hawaiians embracing Christianity, the Victorian era being a time when Haydn's music might have been introduced to Hawai'i, and so on — but deep down, there was something unsettling about the combination.

In short, the underlying rhythms — musical, kinesthetic, cultural, religious — did not mesh.

That said, Pang adapted hula steps with a sensitive ear and created several alluring sections, including a winsome solo that he performed with Gabriel's slow aria in compound meter. (Hula is danced in simple meters — i.e., with beats subdivided into two.)

Perhaps most heartbreaking was hearing a fine performance by the Honolulu Symphony Chorus deluged by distractions.