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.