Unpacking; packing.

I didn't bother to fully unpack from Marseille, so the little suitcase is still out, but it's going to be supplemented with some checked luggage. There's lots more stuff to take this time, since I'll be in Canada for seventeen days, and have a couple of performances to give while I'm there. Maggie and the boys are following on the 4th of April.

A few more photos that I wanted to share from Marseille/Avignon. Here is side of the Marseille Opera, the ticket office.


Here is the opera from the facade side... notice the palm trees?


Here's the view of the harbour in Marseille... boats all over the place, and many of them quite beautiful wooden ones. It's a huge harbour, its entrance guarded by large fortifications on either side.


It wouldn't be France without a manifestation; this one is by the students of the University of Avignon, in protest against President Sarkozy and his funding cuts.

* * *

Now back to packing, which is going slower than I had hoped. My plane leaves early tomorrow morning, and I'll be arriving around 10am. I'll blog next from Toronto, Belleville, or Perth, Ontario, when I next have a moment and free internet access...

Sun!

I'm back in Brussels now, and have time to little bit before I head to bed... eight hours of travel does take it out of you...


As I explained last blog entry, Brussels covered me with rainy, frozen kisses as I left, and when I arrived in Marseille, what did I discover? Sun, sun, sun. Let's just say I know what the Aztecs were on about. It was beautiful the whole time I was there; beautiful sun shining in the church windows, sunsets at the railway station, and bright warm sunshine all day in Marseille and Avignon.


Marseille was enjoying the warm weather, and so I put away my umbrella and raincoat and explored the city. I'll post some more photos later, but the thing that struck me the most was the light. Really, the light is fabulous in the south of France: warm, rich, alive somehow. Everything seems geared towards it. The people take every opportunity to sit outside, blinking in the brightness, drinking their little cups of coffee, smoking, and debating.


Avignon was as I remembered it; oozing history, with many curious streets and avenues, and buildings that looked like they had many stories to tell. I felt very relaxed in this beautiful theatre and had fun with my audition material. I also was reminded of how small the opera world is: Conrad, a baritone from Austria who was auditioning, knows Jennifer Chamandy from Innsbruck; I had the pleasure of singing Baron Douphol and watching here fabulous Violetta in a Traviata some years ago. Then I met a soprano named Rebecca Nelsen, who has fest contract near Hanover in Germany; she immediately asked if I knew Shannon Mercer, a rising Canadian star in the opera firmament; I sang a Morales to her beautiful Michaela in a concert Carmen a little while back. Small world! Obviously it pays to be polite, friendly and supportive of your fellow artists, since word gets around pretty fast if you aren't...


Then it was back to Marseille for another night, a little exploring on foot, and then I got on the bus to the airport. One bus ride, one plane ride, and two trains later, and I'm home. Of course, as I got off the plane, can you guess what the weather was like? You bet it was: cold, grey, rainy. BLEEEEECHHH!

Bienvenue à Bruxelles! Sheesh.... at least the welcome that I got from Maggie, Malcolm and Duncan was warm...

Hi diddle-dee-dee; an actor's life for me!

Right now I'm living the life of a glamourous European opera singer. Hotels in Marseille under 100 EUR a night were pretty thin on the ground or booked up when I checked, so I'm staying in a 22 EUR per night dorm-type hostel with two 20-something students from the university of Wisconsin. Sadly, they are not corn-fed pig-tailed blondes which would have certainly made a more interesting blog entry (dear DIARY!), but then I would of course have some explaining to do to my lovely wife.

The one guy is very serious economics student, born in Hong Kong, who lived as a child in Richmond Hill before his family moved to New York. The other guy is an english/history major who is also a bit of a philosopher. They are both on exchange to the university of Warwick in England for the year, and we talked a bit about mass produced American culture, the British, economic imperialism, that sort of thing. They have been holidaying in Nice, Dublin and Cork, of all places for the last three weeks while on holiday from school.

It is much nicer here in Marseille than it was in Brussels... as I left, it seemed that Brussels was trying to make me glad to leave, soaking me with freezing rain and doing its best to blow my umbrella to pieces. After the flight, I got off the plane and it was clear and much warmer, maybe 15 degrees. I took a little walk around, had a inexpensive shwarma dinner at an Israeli-run restaurant near the opera house (good old provencale cooking!) and headed back to the hostel to settle down. This place reminds me a bit of an IKEA catalogue. Certainly the beds were purchased there. Still it's clean, and quiet, and cheap. Tomorrow I have a private room, so we'll see if that is any nicer.

Hopefully I can crash out soon, I need my sleep for tomorrow. Good night!

"Allons enfants de la Patrie...

... Le jour de gloire est arrivé!"

Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Marseille to stay for a couple of days, with a 30 minute rail trip to back and forth to Avignon to audition Thursday evening. I hope to wangle an audition with the opera in Marseille itself while I'm there; just dropping in might be quite effective. At least they would get a look at me in person instead of over the phone, and maybe I'll be able to communicate better face to face. My ear is tuned to the Belgian way of speaking, and I find the southern accent a little hard to understand. I get along fine but it requires more effort and concentration to make out what the provençales are saying than it does among the (to me at least) clearer-pronouncing and slower-talking northerners.

I'm back late in the day on Friday and then Maggie and Malcolm are off to the Euro Space Centre, for a "space camp" weekend that they won passes to, so it will be some more Duncan and Dad time here. Not a bad thing.

Then on Wednesday it's already time for me to leave again, heading to Canada to do the Brahms Requiem April 5th in Perth. Maggie and the boys arrive on that weekend, and then we have a whirlwind of rehearsals, auditions, a performance, immediate family committments, and attempts to try to get some visits in with our friends/extended family. It will be a busy couple of weeks!

I'm taking my computer so likely I'll have time to blog in Marseille or Avignon while I'm there. I'm excited as this is the first time I've visited the big port of Marseille, home of ... you guessed it... bouillabaisse! I hope to get a chance to compare the genuine article with my version of this famous soup/stew.

A bientot!

Spring is coming

It's been a fabulous week here weather-wise, pretty much sun all day since Tuesday, and temperatures reaching the middle teens. It's a little cooler today, but still clear.

We had a great time in Glons this last weekend, celebrating with our friends at their Carnaval parade. As strange as it may seem to have a Mardi Gras type parade a good week or two into lent, that's how things are done here, and I think they celebrate Carnaval in different towns over quite an extended period, and it seems to me to more a party about the death of winter than anything else. Here are some photos of Nathalie and her "commune of hippies" in her vintage Citroën 2CV which they painted up circa 1968:



Malcolm joined in and rode in the parade, while Duncan and Maggie and I stuck with JR, watched it go by, and collected the stuff the people threw out at us. This included lots of sweets, but also little toys and even a pair of sunglasses for Malcolm. It was quite an experience, and people really get into it, building elaborate floats, and all dressing up in coordinated costumes that look to be specially made for this kind of event. The floats are all equipped with generators and extremely loud sound systems to keep everybody hopping:



We decided not to attend the big dance that evening that concluded the festival, but turned in early. Let's just say we'd probably had enough Jupiler and péké (a Belgian gin, also known as genièvre that they drink straight, or mixed with Coke) that afternoon do us just fine, and we didn't need any more. By a happy coincidence our friends Bryan and Kiana were heading to Tongres with their two little ones to check out the antique market, and we met them there to browse together, and then stayed to share a beer and conversation at a lovely little outdoor patio near the canal. The playground that we were planning on visiting with the kids is currently being torn up and resurfaced, but they had fun running around the nearby track, and playing in the skateboard park. We made it back to Brussels at a reasonable hour to prepare for Monday morning in plenty of time.

Now that the weather is changing we can see that spring is coming. Much of the last two weeks has been warmer and sunny, and I've felt a real resurgence of energy in March after a less vital February. A friend mentioned that I might have a touch of seasonal affective disorder (SAD); certainly it is a struggle for me to stay motivated during dark dreary winter months. I remember as a student that I always loved first term the most: the crisp clear weather, the outdoor sports, new clothes to wear, new courses to take. My marks from the first term were consistently much higher than second term, a pattern that continued through high school into university.

Here the "winter" isn't as long as it is in Canada, but the weather is normally much greyer, and because we are located at a much higher latitude, the winter days are noticeably shorter than in Canada. I think I might have blogged about this before, but the roughly seven degrees of difference between Brussels and Toronto translates into quite a significant difference in light levels. On December 21st, for example, the length of daylight is just under eight hours here, while in Toronto we get one hour more. Of course the reverse is true in the spring: on June 20th we get 15.5 hours in Toronto, while in Brussels, it's 16.5, but that somehow doesn't seem as significant.

In any case I'm motivated to sing and to swim and to call houses. Late last week I went on a tear and called eleven different opera houses in the south of France, emailed my stuff to some of them, and printed, stuffed and mailed out envelopes to those who preferred hard copies. I heard back from Avignon this week, they want to have me sing next Thursday, and I'm going to follow up with the rest today. I don't know that I'll get a chance to see Pierre and Claude Fleta near Montpellier before-hand, but we'll see. Maybe later in the year.

In other news I have just found out that I've been offered two performances of Bach's Weinachtsoratorium in Canada with the Pax Christi Chorale this December, while we are back in Toronto. That's really exciting as I haven't had a chance to sing this bit of Bach yet, and conductor/director Stephanie Martin and I are talking about adding some other things to the programme that would suit the ensemble.

What else? I've been getting dirty planting primroses, lavender and forget-me-nots in window boxes with the boys, and I've got a perfumed climbing rose here that I need to transplant into a bigger pot. I miss my garden back in Canada, I didn't realize how much: this is the first time in fifteen years that I haven't had a little patch of earth to play in. Of course last year we had the Destrées beautiful grounds, which I was too cautious to do much with, so I didn't notice it until now. Despite the availability of fantastic local produce here, I think we're going to grow some green beans on the terrace anyway, just for fun.

Here is wishing you a good weekend!

Sundays are great; Mondays, not so much.

Sunday went very well; I had left the slugabeds at home and headed off to the Sunday market alone to look for some nice mussels for dinner, a few vegetables, bread, and of course 50 tulips for 10 EUR, a perennial (haha) favorite. I arrived in time to discover that the grey skies had disappeared and it was a clear blue sky, 10 degrees... of course that calls for fresh oysters and a glass of white wine at a little makeshift cafe in the middle of the market, doesn't it?


When the fish merchant proved to be out of mussels I opted instead for an assortment of different fish, to try to make bouillabaisse for the first time. If you've never had it, you are really missing out; it was delicious (and I'm eating the leftovers up right now), and frankly dead easy to make. The combination of the delicate stock, the licorice flavours of the fennel, the rouille of roasted red peppers and garlic, the garlicy toasted bread and the assorted fish and seafood flavours were sublime.

I also so noticed that the strawberries were in, and I picked some up for dessert with ice cream, something that Maggie and Duncan welcomed with great enthusiasm:


The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the sun, with different family members doing as they wished: variously, enjoying a good book, playing, writing, and getting ready for Monday morning...

... which dawned grey and cool, with a small accumlation of snow on the cars and rooftops! We were surpised, given the spring weather of the day before, but I got the boys off to school without incident, sat down with satisfaction to a second cup of espresso, and began to plan my week in the silent comfort of home, sans enfants. Ahhh, peace and tranquility! I sang through a few arias, tried out the new piano, and generally was enjoying myself until I got a call from Maggie, saying that he'd hurt himself at school.

Apparently Duncan's class was doing a science demonstration, and he was running, and tripped over an extension cord, bashing his head on a chair. They put ice on it, and asked him if he needed to go home; he opted to stay. I don't think there's any lasting damage, but he has the look of a prizefighter:


It's crazy! You bring your kid home from the hospital after an operation, feed him soft cool foods, make him rest, cover him with a blanket, help him to heal, and the first day he's out of your sight for a couple of hours, he bashes his head against something. Sigh.

After this mini crisis, the day ended positively, with a visit to the doctor to have his ears checked out. Everything seems to be healing nicely, and he got the green light to get water in his ears, have an immersive bath or a shower, go swimming, etc. He's pleased, he's a water baby for sure.

Now it's back to work for me. Have a good week!

Musical weekend

It's Sunday morning and Maggie and Malcolm are still lying in. Duncan of course is up, has had his breakfast, and is singing away while he plays with his little action figures... I never noticed Malcolm making up dialogue for his toys, but both a script and a soundtrack seem to emerge spontaneously from our younger one. It is charming for the first 30 seconds or so, but then makes it a little hard to concentrate when one is trying to read or write something...

He'll have more opportunity to exercise his musical imagination after today, as my search for a digital piano was finally successful. After a sharp bit of bidding on eBay I managed to find a youngish Kawai piano, for about half the cost of a new one. I'm arranging to go pick it up this evening.

It will be a great relief to have a piano in the house again. Although I really don't like electronic instruments - even a mediocre acoustic piano sounds better to me than an electronic one - the flexibility of being able to move the piano from the living room to the upstairs bedroom (when required), and the lower cost makes it the best option for us and our apartment. I've been making do with a pitch-pipe for warmups and rehearsals the last eight months, and that's no good either; I haven't been able to explore the harmony of the accompaniment when learning an aria, and it really wouldn't be a bad thing to do some piano work myself, as Bruce has said, it will help my music reading. Duncan did a little bit of beginning piano work with me last year in our other house, and he keeps bugging me for more; there are spots still open for music classes at the music academy nearby, and I'm going to call tomorrow and get him enrolled, and Malcolm too if he wants.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to getting back to my own routine. Being home with Duncan for the past week has been a chance to be close with him, but I've needed some time away for my own mental health, and have taken a couple of opportunities to do so: on Thursday evening I went to see a movie by myself while Maggie stayed home and caught up on some homework, and then yesterday I went swimming in the late morning and got in 2 km, or 80 lengths in just under an hour. I think exercise is critical for stress relief, but equally important is having some time to oneself, to regain one's mental equilibrium.

I might do a little more exercise today, and take a walk to the Sunday market. It's not sunny but it is around 10 degrees out, so that's reason enough to get outside and pick up something nice for dinner. There are great deals on flowers there also, like 50 tulips for 10 euros, that sort of thing.

Last night Maggie and I went to the cinema again, this time with our friends Bryan and Kiana and Constant, to see Madama Butterfly broadcast live from the Metropolitan in New York. It was stunning both visually and musically... for me it is very difficult to maintain my composure through any Puccini opera, and Butterfly is particularly affecting. The way that it unfolds dramatically is unbelievably powerful, and somehow Puccini's music connects directly to my emotional centre... I'm a wreck afterwards, in a good way. Patricia Racette who sang the Butterfly was particularly powerful, and I awoke this morning with the themes still circling in my head... such incredible music.

Happy Sunday!

The Recovery Position...

... for Duncan is this: easy chair, track pants, glass in hand, watching movies... I got the strangest flash today that I was seeing him as he might appear in 60 years' time, blanket on his knees, beer in hand, completely absorbed in the boob tube. Yikes!

He's his old self now, after having slept soundly for almost 11 hours last night, and is behaving normally now, asking for spicy roasted pepper and sausage pasta or that sort of thing. Instead he's had to subsist on grenadine syrup in water, homemade popsicles, pudding, ice cream, and yoghurt and so on. He's not a fellow with a sweet tooth, so where Malcolm would be in seventh heaven, Duncan doesn't seem that interested. He tried some chicken soup today and that was a success, and has asked several times when he'll be allowed to eat real food again.

He's not complaining of any pain, so long as I make sure to give him a dose every four hours of pain medication, and keep up the fluids, and his activity level is normal. In fact, I have to keep reminding him to slow down, and stop acting out all the moves from Kung-Fu Panda or Superman, at least until his stitches are healed up. In the meantime it's pretty much continuous movies, drawing and colouring, and bandes dessinées.

Maggie just got home so it's time for dinner...

The bird has flown

He's on the bus and on his way, with nary a backward glance. Success!

I realized that I haven't been posting with photos recently, so here are a few of the last week.


First we celebrated Mardi Gras (we called it "Pancake Tuesday" in my neighborhood as a child).


A day out on Wednesday started with a visit to Le Chien Vert (above), a wicked cool fabric store that is very kid-friendly, filled with quirky furniture made from pianos, boats and other interesting things. Then we stopped for lunch, and visited the large plastic rabbits (another example of Brussels inexplicable fascination with installation art).


Afterwards Maggie went home to sew...


...and the boys and I went to the Cinematek to see an original 1977 print of Star Wars.


No THX sound (just "Dolby Stereo in selected theatres"), no "episode IV", no revisionist CGI Jabba, and DEFINITELY no "Greedo shot first" crap, just the real deal on scratchy celluloid. Needless to say we were on the edge of our seats! It was great to see in the theatre; you forget how different the movies were when you had to go out to see one.

That's about it for photographic evidence of the week. Duncan was morose this morning and didn't want Malcolm to leave, making sure his brother knew how much he'll miss him.


No doubt the steady stream of ice cream, and lack of competition (for parental attention, B.D., choice of DVD to watch) will help cheer him up.

Back to School tomorrow

The holiday is just winding down. Malcolm's bag has been packed since this morning for his week of school in the Ardennes; Maggie has done a fair bit of sewing but is finishing up some marking for tomorrow, and planning her week, and Duncan has been particularly affectionate with his brother as he knows that Malcolm leaves in the morning...

In fact the timing is pretty good. Duncan has only one day of school tomorrow, and then he's heading in for his tonsilectomy/adenectomy early on Tuesday morning. I've already laid in a good stock of bandes desinées and DVDs, and tomorrow I'll go get some puddings, applesauce, ice cream, that sort of thing to help him recuperate. He will be home for the remainder of the week, so I bet he will have just gotten used to being the little king when Malcolm gets home on Friday afternoon.

I got hit with one whopper of an achy, fatigue-ridden flu mid-week, but apart from a persistent sniffle seem to be pretty much over it, so I hope this week to come is one of further recovery. Fortunately Duncan has dodged that bullet, thanks in part no doubt to my persistent hand-washing, and I think the vitamins he's been taking for the last two weeks haven't hurt.

For those of you who remember last year and the (ahem) creative letters that Malcolm sent home during his trip, we are feeling a lot more comfortable about Nettine this year. He's grown up a lot, made friends, been to summer camp since then, and enjoyed himself, and I'm not really worried about it... I suppose if he is a real traditionalist he might try to scare us with a baleful letter, but I'm sure it would be purely for the fun of it, and I don't think he'll forget to write "just kidding" this time. At least I hope he won't forget.

We'll see, won't we? Until next time...