Another tooth.

Duncan lost tooth number two on Monday evening... my parents were here this past weekend and just missed the event. They've headed off to Germany to visit friends but will be back this coming weekend.


We took the time during the beautiful weather this past weekend to get in some baseball in the park down the street as well as do some dancing in the living room.


Sunday evening I headed down to La Monnaie to attend the general rehearsal of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, staged by fellow Canadian Robert LePage, and man was it a treat! It was set in 1951 and used all sorts of beautiful stage illusions, tricks from cinema and puppetry to create seamless and elegant scene changes that had me laughing aloud from the sheer pleasure of the thing... there were elements that reminded me of Hitchcock films, of the Rock Hudson-James Dean film Giant and many other quotes and bits of magic that were obviously chosen by a director who simply loves theatricality in all its variety. An oil derrick that morphs into a film crane, an inflatable airstream trailer that emerges from the floor and then floats off into the heavens when its job is done, a red convertible that really seems to drive through vast stretches of roadway, projection screens that actually look like the scenery they are supposed to display; these are just a few of the elements that supported this great performance by these singing actors of Stravinsky's extremely funny score. I was sitting right next to Peter, who as the assistant conductor has to give notes to the conductor, so was in the very front row. I would imaginge that some of the effects will work even better from the second balcony where Maggie and I will see the show later on this month.


The cast was superb; the British tenor Mark Padmore as a Tom Rakewell you could really empathize with, Sally Matthews as a gorgeous looking, acting and sounding Anne Truelove, the celebrated german baritone Dietrich Henschel as a creepy and charismatic Nick Shadow, and four excellent singers in the supporting roles: Carole Wilson as Mother Goose, Tania Kriss as Baba the Turk, the Canadian Bass-baritone Nathan Berg as Anne's father, and an excellent John Graham-Hall as a fabulously sung and acted cameo as Sellem the auctioneer. Afterwards I had a chance to meet Nathan Berg, and Dietrich Henschel, so that was quite a pleasant capper to the evening...

As a matter of fact, Stravinsky seems to be quite a connector for our circle of friends... Kinza and Darcy are in Toronto at the moment finishing up work on another Stravinsky opera being premiered right now by the same stage director, who is of course the wonderful Robert Lepage; this show in Toronto is "The Nightingale and other Stories" and by all accounts it is really great, involving an orchestra pit filled with water (they took the musicians out first), singers in wetsuits in the water singing their roles, marionettes, etc. Who said opera was boring! In another bit of synchronicity, I hear that Colin Ainsworth and Lucia Cesaroni are heading out to Victoria to do their own Rake's Progress with Timothy Vernon and Pacific Opera Victoria, where Bruce just finished a very successful Germont in Traviata. Toi toi to them, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun!