Happy New Year

Well, we are fast approaching the final performance of La Traviata this evening.  While she has already seen the video feed, Maggie will finally have a chance to see on stage the show that has been occupying so much of my time since mid-October.  For those of you who haven't see the online broadcast, the Arteliveweb video is here.  I understand that La Monnaie will release their edited multi-camera broadcast on their own website in mid-January.

After the performance there will be a gala on the top floor of the opera, to celebrate the new year and to close out the production; Maggie and I will both attend.  Fortunately, not everyone from the team will be new to her; we had a group of singers over for pizza in November, and yesterday we all went out to lunch at a very cool restaurant that I had never heard of before, called La Fleur en Papier Doré.

This very cosy bar was the unofficial headquarters of the Belgian surrealists in the 1920s, during the heyday of René Magritte, but in later years also attracted comic artist Hergé, Pierre Alechinsky, Louis Scutenaire and Jacques Brel.  Today, the café is still a favourite among the artistic and literary crowd.  We managed to fit nineteen people into the back room, and enjoyed the ambiance as well as traditional Belgian dishes like stoemp saucisse.


We have been getting in quite a bit of visiting with different friends, to celebrate Christmas and the new year.  Yesterday we had a lovely dinner with the Gardners and Julia's parents, who were visiting.  We had a really great time, with much delicious food and lots and lots of laughter, mostly around several rounds of "Wherewolf", which is a really fantastic game to play if you have at least eight people.  It works best with around 16, but we managed very well with ten players.

I have been suffering under a really terrible cold for the last week or so.  I have managed to get the voice moving enough to sing the parts that I have in La Traviata without any difficulty, but it was a challenge to get things opened up for The People that Walked in Darkness from Messiah so early in the morning for yesterday's service.  Fortunately it is the lowest piece in the work and the fact that my voice is a third lower than usual actually helped!  I really do have to get better soon though, as we have quite a bit of exposed singing coming up for our Epiphany concert in Great Malvern Priory, Worchestershire, England.  There will be minimal rehearsal of the ensemble so I need to spend some time myself getting things ready.

Tomorrow by this time we should be in Amsterdam getting ready to get on the ferry to Newcastle.  It is an overnight run, and it will exciting for all of us to have a cabin to ourselves, and to sleep on the boat!  We arrive in Newcastle in the morning of the 2nd and should be at Garvald by noon.  I have the cameras charged up, and will be taking lots of pictures.

Right now the boys have been taking it easy, doing some origami, and reading books and watching tv.  Maggie has had a chance to finally finish a quilt that she stopped working on three years ago.  It is one that she inherited in pieces from Walter Unverricht, with a photograph of an inspiration quilt that Walter's wife Eleonore had seen, and set about reconstructing.  Eleonore had become unable to finish it before she died of a debilitating illness, and Walter (also now passed on) gave it to Maggie when we visited him in Ebstorf during the Easter vacation of 2008.  We already have two or three table runners that Eleonore made and gave us as wedding presents, but this quilt will be nice on one of the boys' single beds, or as something to curl up with on the sofa.

So here is to endings and beginnings... a Happy New Year in advance to all of you, and many wishes for success in 2013...

Merry Christmas

Monday December 24th, morning.
We have received a number of lovely Christmas cards and newsletters from friends and family, and haven't sent any out ourselves.  It has been a super busy period for us, so I hope this post will serve as a Christmas letter of sorts.

The opera is almost over; we had our second matinee and ninth show yesterday, and are into the home stretch.  Everyone is happy to have a few days off now, to relax; many people from the cast have already left, on their way to their home cities for Christmas.  Here in Brussels there are a great many get-togethers planned, and we hope to get together via Video conference with loved ones over the next few days.  Since we have British tv via internet we will be sure to watch the Queen's Christmas message, and of course the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

We picked up our Christmas tree on Saturday, and put it up that evening, with some help from a colleague of Maggie's and his daughter who were over for dinner.  There are a number of presents sent by family members already occupying space under the tree, and some new ornaments already hanging upon it.  We will be going out this morning to browse the Christmas market downtown, and pick up some things for each person's stockings.  The boys have already received some big presents at the feast of St. Nicolas, so with the things sent by family, there is no need for us to give them anything big.  Still we try to follow the "something to wear, something to eat, something to read, something to do" guidelines for Christmas gifts.

Really, what do any of us really lack for?  We are tremendously lucky.  We are all healthy and seeing development in our careers, and in the case of the boys, in their school life and hobbies.  We live in a bounteous country, in a nice home, filled with many beautiful and useful things.  here's a little bit of that bounty: last night's roast leg of venison with a red wine / sirop de Liege reduction, smoothed out with a little cream.  Yummy.

Malcolm has been growing in social confidence in his school, likes his teachers for the most part, and has improved his Maths results enormously in the last couple of months.  He also has finished with his braces, received a new pair of glasses, and played the part of Herod to great acclaim at the St. Andrew's Christmas Pageant.  He has moved to the alto section of the choir as his voice is slowly deepening, but so far it hasn't broken so he still likes to sing.  True, he has had the disappointment of breaking his wrist, which has made it impossible for him to play the flute, and has also hindered his ability to practice his latest enthusiasms of slight-of-hand, card tricks and juggling, but he is not completely disabled by the cast, and should be free of it in another couple of weeks and can then resume the pursuit of these dextrous arts.  He has discovered that being a musician is actually kind of cool, and for an activity day at school, chose choral and percussion workshops, and was complimented by the prof on his sense of rhythm.

Duncan is having a great time with Karate; he likes the serious and disciplined approach of his sensei, and the physicality of this martial art appeals to him.  He also loves his theatre class, which plans to present Peter Pan this spring (with him in the role of Captain Hook) and he enjoys dance class as well; there is one other boy, so he's not alone there.  His marks are exceptionally good in school, so much so that it almost would be good for him to move up a grade, but then they don't seem to do that in Belgian schools, and he would miss his social circle.  While he and his friends compete very fiercely with each other and the alliances shift frequently, he values them very much.

Maggie has been enjoying a second year in Middle School at St. John's International School teaching Social Studies and new this year, a Foods & Textiles class to 11 year old students--a return to Family Studies which is her first teaching love.  As well she is continuing her French classes on Wednesdays and Yoga on Mondays.  She's been given another clean bill of health and we are commemorating three years since her breast cancer diagnosis; she is healthy and is feeling well.

For me, I've already written lots about the many artistic successes this past year in previous blog posts.  2013 promises to be a continuation of that upward trend, so I am very thankful.  On the plate for the next 12 months are works by Bach, Duruflé, Brahms, Prokofiev, Mozart, Puccini, Britten... I feel very lucky, and thank friends, family, and especially my mentor Bruce Kelly for their continuing support of my artistic life and of our family's European adventures...

Merry Christmas to everyone, and we wish you many successes in the New Year!

New developments

Okay.  Four performances down and eight more to go.  The critical reaction in the press has been largely positive, and audiences have mostly been reacting with a lot of enthusiasm, especially at the final curtain calls.  There was substantial booing during the second performances, with some cat-calling from the audience, especially during the act 2 "Bunga bunga" party scene at Flora's... I must say that while it is a little jarring, I guess it does mean that people were at least paying attention!  The director is off working on other projects but I think she will be back just before Christmas to see the show again.

Maggie won't get a chance to see it until the very last performance, but she will be coming to the New Year's Eve party that follows, and will have a chance to dress up and look elegant in the Salon of La Monnaie.  Speaking of dresssing up, we took advantage of a night off last Saturday and went to the St. John's Christmas party... it was a lovely occasion and a lot of fun...

Now that the opera has opened I was expecting to have a little bit of time to go to the Christmas Markets and do some trinket shopping, but I have been busy with other things, and have only walked through the market on my way to the performances...

 

But Duncan has been more organized, and was good enough to supply his wish list...

... and I must say with the exception of the iPod, it is a rather restrained set of choices.  But then he seems suitably impressed with the new bike that Saint Nicolas brought him on the 6th...

... and so perhaps he realized that he has much to be thankful for already.  Malcolm received a first edition of Julian May's The Many-Coloured Land, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1981 so he was very pleased.  He also had a late St. Nicolas present: new glasses, which he is super excited about.  They have made his schoolwork much easier to see, although he had the misfortune late last week to break his right wrist in gym class.  He is able to hold a pen and write, so his exams - which started this morning - should be okay, but I don't know that he can play the flute.  His temporary cast will be changed to a resin one next Monday, so at that point we will see if the surgeon can give him a cast that allows for enough movement that he can still practice and perform.  As well, he had his braces taken off this week, and luckily has a semi-permanent wire behind the bottom teeth, and an upper retainer that he only has to wear at night.  So many changes in his appearance in such a very short time!  It's a little disorienting.

Last night's opera performance was our second corporate gala, for BNP Partibas; the first was sponsored by Electrabel, the utility company.  In both cases we enjoyed some excellent cuisine after the performance.  Given the space constraints at La Monnaie, there were tents and trailers with generators set up outside the opera prior to the performances, so that the caterers could prepare everything prior to the show, and there were many chefs running around outside in the freezing cold.  After the performances we all appreciated a glass of wine and some hot food; my personal favorite was the penne with black truffles, olives and sun dried tomatoes that they served hot into the cavity carved into the centre of a big wheel of parmigiano, where they let its heat warm and melt the cheese a bit before scraping it back out... yummmmmm.

I've received some nice Saint Nicolas presents too... I got a call last week from Kerry Stratton, and we will be performing a Viennese concert or two together in the Spring of 2014 in Canada, with excerpts from The Merry Widow and Die Fledermaus, along with some other pieces in keeping with the theme of Viennese operetta.

Today I also got an email from my colleague Bart Van Reyn, to do Masetto and the Commendatore in Don Giovanni with him in a semi-staged touring production here in Belgium next October, with perhaps half a dozen performances, with one at least in the BOZAR.  Bart was the first conductor in Belgium to hire me, and we will do the St. Matthew Passion and the Brahms Requiem this spring, but this will be the first bit of opera that we do together and I'm very excited.

Don Giovanni will be played by Werner Van Mechelen, who is one of the most successful Belgian baritones of the day, so it will be an exciting project for sure.

I will be happy to look at Masetto soon, but for the moment I am practicing the aria and duet of the Don himself, as well as music of Figaro and the Count from Nozze di Figaro, and Papageno from Zauberflöte, so that these will be ready for the house concert that I perform with soprano Rita Matos Alves and Peter Tomek on Monday evening.  Our friend Pauline Camacho will present this concert in her magnificent maison de maître in Brussels, in aid of the Charity Mothers at Risk, and it looks as if it will be sold out... good news!

Opening

 

We had our opening night last night, and everyone was suitably energetic.  As we suspected there was a contingent who booed the mis-en-scene, but it would seem that they were ready for it, and it didn't seem to fuss them at all during the curtain call.  For the most part it seemed as if the audience was open and engaged with the concept of the show.

What I can say is that Sebastien Gueze really sang his best Alfredo so far, and Scott Hendricks was powerful and gentle as Germont, and Simona was... well, lovely.  I am convinced that I will look back and say "I was there for her first Violetta".  Really we are all looking forward to Friday night when we have performance number 2, and then ahead for the rest of the run...

This week has involved a lot of firsts...  I sang the first performance of this Traviata on the stage of the Monnaie (a first for me in a major European house); this afternoon I had my first audition with directors Peter de Caluwe and Christophe Bezzone, and I sang "Wie Todesahnung / O du mein holder Abendstern" for the first time; that was my second piece; the Count's aria was the first...

So you see that Christmas is really coming early for me!  Now it is a day off, and a chance to get things in order family-wise.  Today I took Malcolm to the optomtrist; he needs glasses, very clearly, and I let him choose some nice frames; I need to pay the optometrist tomorrow morning.  As well, it is St. Nicolas tomorrow, and the boys' shoes are conspicuously laid out, imploringly, so we must do our parental duty....

Opening night

Well that moment that I have been awaiting for many years is now about to arrive.  This evening I will step out onto the boards of one of the finest opera houses in the world - indeed, the theatre that Opernwelt magazine voted the opera house of the year in 2011 - Le Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie.  It doesn't really matter to me one bit that my sung role is a minor one; I feel very fortunate to be treading the boards in character with so many wonderful colleagues, and playing on this historic stage, with the beautiful music of Verdi's La Traviata.

Bruce has sung in this house many times during his Liège-based career, and his mentor Pierre Fleta sang many roles here, including Hoffmann, Rodolpho in Bohème, and many others.

I have been being very responsible and have thus far resisted the urge to recklessly sample the pleasures that abound in Brussels this time of year, like the arrival of the Beaujolais...

... but I have also had little time to tour the Christmas Markets that have sprung up around the Centre-ville.

I did manage to take a short trip through the Grand'Place to see the "tree" that Electrabel has erected there in lieu of a real one.  It has sparked real outrage, and I can see why.  To me it looks as if scattered bits of the scaffolding that cloaks so many of the perpetually-under-restoration buildings in Brussels were seized and spun about by an errant cyclone, then left in a pile in the middle of Grand'Place.  Les Bruxellois seem to enjoy contemporary stagings of grand opera very much, but Christmas trees are and entirely different matter... I think the expression is that "they stayed away in droves"...
 

I leave you with some beautiful singing by our three principals: Simona Šaturová, as Violetta, Sébastien Guèze as Alfredo, and Scott Hendricks as Germont, courtesy of Télébrussels.