Happy New Year!

I guess that I've been so busy with things that I haven't really taken the time to write much since late November. When you have guests in the house who've taken the trouble to come overseas to visit you, it really doesn't make sense to sit in front of a computer when you could be spending time together. So it was with my parents until they left for Paris, and then it was so again when Bruce arrived for three weeks back on the 13th of December. Bruce left for Canada a few days ago, and as you can see in the photo above, he left evidence of his presence here (including a tendency to drink out of one's ear in photographs). Now that we are on our own for the first time in several weeks, I can catch up on my correspondence...

While Bruce did live in Liège for many years, and even sang at La Monnaie (the opera house here in Brussels), I don't think he'd seen much of this city, so it was nice to take him around to see different things in our current "home town" when we weren't working through some new roles for me, including "Valentin" from Gounod's Faust, or "Malatesta" from Verdi's Don Carlos, or tweaking "Count Almaviva" from Le Nozze di Figaro.

Bruce has been getting ready to sing "Sharpless" in Madama Butterfly out in Victoria in February, so we shared a couple of hours coaching with a repetiteur at La Monnaie, and I think I'll make a monthly visit to him, just to make sure the voice stays in the right place. That's something you really can't judge on your own, as I've told my family and many friends; the one thing you can't really count on as a singer is the sound of your own voice, as you don't hear it as the rest of the world does. Instead you need to sing by feel, or sensation, and have regular sessions with someone with a good set of ears to keep your sound at its best.

Some of the things we did included a visit to the antique market at the Sablon, a visit with our Canadian tenor friend Keith Boldt to Grand'place, and we even had a chance to go see an opera, the baritone version of Massenet's Werther here at La Monnaie on December 23rd. The visit to the Sablon was noteworthy because Bruce found an old engraving of La Monnaie that he could add to his collection. The shopkeeper lit up when he heard we were opera singers, and immediately put on a recording of "Casta Diva" from Bellini's Norma, sung by (who else?) the immortal Maria Callas. It was hard to get out of there on time, and on budget, with all of his enthusiasm for showing us engravings of famous actors and singers and musicians...

On the 24th itself we took a trip down to Glons to have a fantastic Christmas eve at the Cloes with 36 guests at dinner, including a kids' table that sat nine. Things got going around 7:30 in the evening, and there were many rounds of canapes and kir royales, followed by salmon appetizers done two ways, delicious soup, followed by the triumphant arrival of the turkey around midnight. This was followed by presents for everyone, and then two huge yule log cake, each at least a metre long. We finally got the kids and ourselves to bed by around 1:30 am.! It was a great party, and reminds me a lot of having a dinner with my own extended family.

After our Christmas exertions we decided to opt for a more relaxed New Year's Eve at home, with a simple meal of steak frites, salad, cheese, and champagne. On New Year's day we cooked the marcassin (wild boar) filet that had been marinating in red wine for the previous two days. It was flambéed in cognac, then cooked in the marinade, and we had it with cranberry-stuffed apples, mashed potatoes and a variety of vegetables. Malcolm felt just like the cartoon character Obelix (who is seldom found without a wild boar on his platter) and had a healthy portion of the marcassin both that evening and the next day in a sandwich.

The kids have been enjoying the time off from school, but we have been trying to keep them on a routine in preparation for their return to classes on Monday. Malcolm in particular has been reviewing his mots a retenir or "words to remember" in advance of his test this coming Wednesday, and he's doing very well. Duncan has been very active artistically, doing a lot of collage art, playing my guitar and singing his own rock compositions in his own patois of English/French/Duncanese, and even playing piano... he seems to be very interested in making music, and told me this morning that he wanted to be on the stage. We'll see if this is something that persists, and I'll be looking into music classes in the new year; the conservatory system here in Belgium is extremely well established, and music classes are paid for by the commune, so there's really no reason not to take the opportunity to teach both boys the rudiments of music theory, singing and an instrument.

That's it for now. Happy New Year to you all!