Matthew Zadow's opera blog: Robert Burns

This past weekend was a lot of fun. Yesterday was the 25th, and the commemoration of Robert Burns's birthday on that day in 1759... we've celebrated this unofficial Scottish national day ourselves many times, but this past Saturday we went to St. Andrews for the Burns Supper, and what a supper it was! Maggie and I got dressed up, she in her Rose family kilt that she sewed herself some time ago, and I in my Queen's University tartan tie, and left the kids with a babysitter.

There were kir royales in the upstairs room (not totally Scottish but I'm sure Robbie would have approved) where the delicious smells wafting up from the kitchen piqued our interest and our appetites, and then the piper piped us down for the meal. Haggis, in the traditional and vegetarian varieties, bashed neeps (imported from Scotland, since yellow turnips can't be found in the groceries here) and mashed taties made sure we were satisfied, but there there was also a scotch broth to begin and then a trifle to finish, and good wine, and even some whisky for the toast to the haggis itself. We had Burns songs from three different singers, excellent speeches from three different speakers, and lots of good conversation with our table-mates. Quite a fun time, and one I'd like to make time for again. Who knows, I might even have to learn something to recite for next year?

Sunday in the morning service the boys sang in the junior choir, which did a great job on a klesmer-ish piece, with clapping and dancing and singing. They seem to enjoy the choir, and I think that's great, because they are learning to sing in public, to be organized in rehearsal, to follow a conductor, and so on. Malcolm has rehearsals for a music academy concert of Beatles music that is coming up in a couple of weeks, so with church choir, solfège, rehearsal, and his flute lessons he's certainly jumped into music with both feet this year. I have been as restrained as I can be, to try not to push him, but he has taken the responsibility upon himself, and I haven't had to remind him at all to do his regular practice.

Duncan is quite insistent that he do a proper solfège course himself next year, because he feels a bit ripped off that he has to wait to do an instrument; the private music lessons are essentially free, but only if the children do two hours of theory a week, and that just wouldn't work with our schedule this year, given his rugby commitments. I think I will take the advice of his current music/dance teacher, and put him into theatre arts next year.

Another thing we did this past weekend was go to the "portes ouvertes" day at the Athénée Royal Jean Absil, in the next commune to the north and east of us. Belgian students have 12 years of schooling prior to university/technical school, but rather than the variety of divisions in Canada (K-6, K-8, 7-8, K-12) here it is uniformly split into six years of primary and six years of secondary. This June, Malcolm will finish the 6eme primaire and have to choose a secondary school.

The Jean Absil school is the second one that he has toured, and he seems to like it better than the first one he saw. At Absil all students begin with the same programme in 1st year, and then as they progress, they can choose differing concentrations as their interests dictate. There are three possible streams in second year: "Latines", "Modernes" and "Artistiques", and by third and fourth year there are five: "Scientifiques", "Sciences Latin", "Latin Grec", "Economiques" and "Artistiques". Finally in the last two years there are ten different specializations. Of course it is way too early to think about those specializations yet, but it's nice to know about what is ahead for him.

Malcolm has done exceptionally well in his primary school, despite - or perhaps because of - his lack of a solid base in the Belgian French system. He has had to fight his way through, and has developed some great tools for organization and discipline because of it. Still, his present school is very traditional in its focus, and so he is looking forward to having more art and music in his regular programme. While he does well in grammar and science and is interested in classics (mythology, logic, philosophy) he seemed keen to substitute the four hours of latin a week for three hours of music and one hour of extra french. The music programme is also quite interesting; the students write, compose, stage and perform an "opera" every year. We have other schools to go visit, but Malcolm seemed to like this one very much, so we shall see if he gets in; it's not guaranteed, so we need to have a few choices on our list.

This coming week will be fairly busy. I've been singing regularly again, and contacting more conductors and agents. Tomorrow night I'm going to the general rehearsal of Parsifal at La Monnaie, and then will see it again with Maggie on Sunday. Saturday I will sing for a fund-raiser at a Candlemas performance of Messiah at Brussels' Holy Trinity. It'll be nice practice for the three Messiahs coming up in April in Flanders. I've also had a few more invitations to sing arrive recently, but I'll let you know more about those later.

I'm feeling quite pleased with how the career is going; I did a rough count, and realize that I gave twenty performances of fifteen different programmes in 2010, most of those in Europe. For the coming eighteen months I have sixteen performances of seven different projects on the books already, including three new role debuts, and two or three more in negotiation. In a difficult time, when everyone is searching for work, I feel quite lucky.

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As an epilogue, here are three interesting products for sale in Belgium. It's always interesting to see how things are marketed, and who is endorsing what. First we have the official beer of the Standard de Liege football team, one of Belgium's most successful clubs. Talk about honestly, football fans need their beer.