Heading back home to Brussels

Just a quick post before I leave for the airport...

The workshop of "The Auction", the new chamber opera by John Burge, went very well. It was great to sing through the first act and to get a better sense of the overall arc of the piece. Everyone is looking forward to seeing what John and Eugene Benson, the librettist, will do with act II; based on the present libretto, the narrative ends with a duet section between the "old" and "young" characters of the grandfather, sung by Bruce and myself.

I don't really know if that has happened very often in operas, so that's an exciting idea. I remember that the Poul Ruders adaptation of the Handmaid's Tale, a fantastic production that I saw in Toronto a few years back, used this device, with Stephanie Marshall and Krisztina Szabo (shown below in a still from the production) doing double-duty on the character of Offred, to chilling and wonderful effect. In any case it's going to be fun to do the same in John's new work.


In other news, our new tenants are well established in the house now, and they are really nice people. Again, our main regret in renting our house to them is that we won't be around to get to know them as much as we'd like to! I needed to devote some time this past week to getting to know them, and while we had extensive work done on the house this summer, there were still a number of small repairs that I needed to make myself. Now these are completed, and they should be well set up in the house for the duration of their lease, for the next two years.

Some good news: I've just received some inquiries about further work in Europe; it never rains but it pours, it seems! I don't wish to jinx it before contracts are signed, but it looks like I will be doing another Haydn Creation, this time in german, and a Mendelssohn Paulus, both in Belgium. I also received an offer of another St. John Passion that I rather frustratingly had to turn down, because it conflicts with next March's Canada performances of Schubert, the Creation (in english) and the "No Tenors Allowed" concert that Bruce and Dina and I are presenting in Ottawa.

It's fantastic to have directors calling me instead of the other way around, but I'm not expecting that to continue; there are many more auditions and phone calls I have to make, to keep things moving for next season, and the one after that... They say in sales that if you are having a slow week, it really means that you had a slow week six months ago; the "business cycle" for opera is longer than that, frequently eighteen months for artists at my current level, and even longer for the big stars, who book roles several years in advance. I think next season I'm going to try to spend the "passion season" in Europe; the appetite for the Bach passions seems inexhaustible in Holland and Germany, and I want to further expand my profile in those countries next...

It is beautiful weather in Toronto, so I'm a little sad to leave, but am looking forward to getting home. It's only been a little more than a week, so the family is ok, but professionally I have no time to waste... I have a meeting with the Echevin de la Culture of Ixelles the day after I get back, to discuss the Die Schone Mullerin project there, and then I start rehearsing immediately with Peter to get ready for the first rehearsals of La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein this weekend...