Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis...

 

The first rehearsal for Carmina was last night, and I'm feeling happy about how it is sitting in my voice.  There are always things to work out with the conductor, tempo changes, making an enchainement so that things run together smoothly without unnecessary delays or beats, getting a sense of the overall work, and so on, so I was happy to have some extra time last night.  There are no duets or trios to rehearse, just some solo interjections with the choir, so I haven't met the tenor or soprano soloist yet, and won't until the general rehearsal with the everyone on Friday evening.

This picture above is Breughel the Elder's painting of the land of Cockaigne, a mythical place where the normal rules of order and propriety are suspended.  One of the baritone solos in Carmina Burana is on this text: "I am the abbot of Cucaniensis, and I make counsel with drunkards, and my pleasure is in the sect of dice-players, and whoever seeks me early in the tavern will leave naked after vespers, and so stripped of his clothes, he will cry: «Wafna, wafna!  What have you done, fate most foul!  You have taken away all the joys of our life!»"

I suppose that this utopia of Cockaigne/Cucaniensis where the normal rules of life don't apply is the "land of milk and honey" mentioned so often in literature, and also referred to in "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" song of O Brother, Where Art Thou fame, that I've heard was a favorite of my great-grandfather Wingle.  It's not a great stretch to go from this description in "The Land of Cockaigne", from 13th century france:

"...the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry, and the shops supplied goods for nothing." 

to this, from 1895:

"...Where the handouts grow on bushes / And you sleep out every night / Where the boxcars all are empty / And the sun shines every day / And the birds and the bees / And the cigarette trees / The lemonade springs / Where the bluebird sings / In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

The music may change but human emotions never do.

The weather here in Brussels is becoming colder again; it was hovering around zero this morning.  The skies are wonderfully clear though, and the vapour people breathe out as I see them walking to work and school each morning finds its parallel in the tracks of airplanes high above...

We've had a fair bit of dust hanging about the house this past few days... we had a man come in and help install some cabinets that I had assembled.  This also required knocking a hole in the back wall of the house and cutting holes through the new cabinets to allow for the passage of the ventilation tube; one of the problems with the house has been that with an open concept kitchen/living/dining area, cooking smells tend to permeate the whole place.

 

Now we are happy to not only have an outside-vented fan over the range, but also to have more possibilities of storing, and even displaying our fine glassware and china, as well as some less-frequently used items.  Houses of this age frequently lack closets, so it's important to find extra places to store things.  Now I need to find a good kitchen step-ladder...

As I was writing this, I heard that I will in fact be performing Eisenstein in a Die Fledermaus staging in Canada next February/March... it dovetails nicely with the Schubert, Haydn, and opera excerpts performances already scheduled for March, so that is great.  I'll send more details about the cast when I hear them, but it's with Opera York and my friend Geoff Butler conducting, with shows February 26th, March 1st and March 4rd, 2012.