Apartment in Antwerp for Don Giovanni

Hey, listen, I've been meaning to talk to you, neighbour. You know that kind of strange looking guy, moved into that short-term furnished rental around the corner? You know who I mean, the one looks kind of suspicious? Haven't you seen him? He's always coming home late in the evening and cooking weird meals... I don't think he's from around here, I don't think he's even from this country, you see what I mean. Yes, definitely a foreigner. He's always mumbing things under his breath in some strange language nobody understands, walks around like he's in a daze, or hearing voices. He's sitting right across from me on the bus last week? I looked right at him and smiled, but he was mumbling under his breath and making these frightening faces, he didn't even notice I was there. I swear, the next day I peeked in the side window and saw him striding around the living room and talking, like one half of a conversation, but get this: there was nobody else there. Seriously. And there are the noises: at strange times of the day it's I honking and shouting, coughing, gargling, strange sounds, like he's going through some weird ritual... bizarre.

And there's more, I saw him at the café as well, he's there a lot, always scribbling in this book he has, and writing things down, reading obsessively over and over, sometimes shaking his head and then laughing maniacally. Last night I peeked through the kitchen window and he's looking exhausted but is still at it, putting all sorts of papers up on the wall, they look like diagrammes, and photos and lists... it's like he's involved with some sort of strange plan, like the walls of evidence that psycho killers put up that you see on tv and in the movies.

I even saw him lurching around his living room in a strange sort of dance, but there was no music that I could hear, it was creepy, and it seems to me that he's trying to impersonate someone... He was even waving a sword around, and cursing the other night at 11 o'clock, can you believe it? I have a feeling that the intensity is getting worse, it's like something terrible is going to happen...

Relax! The guy in the short-term isn't a terrorist or psycho-killer; just an opera singer in town for a gig.

We had our music sing through yesterday and today had two services of staging. It always takes longer than you think, especially on the first day, but the cast is very cool and the artistic team as well. It will be a great show, I can tell already, I just wish that we had a little more time to prepare.

Here is the list of the players and the artistic team:

Werner Van Mechelen, Don Giovanni
Norman Patzke, Leporello
Lisette Bolle, Donna Anna
Peter Gijsbertsen, Don Ottavio
Liesbeth Devos, Zerlina
Britt Truyts, Donna Elvira
Matthew Zadow, Masetto/Commendatore

Korneel Hamers, metteur en scène
Julia Weisbrich, costumes & décor
Bart Van Reyn, direction musicale
Le Concert d’Anvers
Choeur de chambre Octopus

So if you google some of these people you will see that they are of a very high quality, and I'm very glad to be here. Still it's a little disorienting, being away from home on my own for an opera. You really have no time at all for anything else, you don't really mnow the city and it's very tiring mentally and physically to be in rehearsals all the day long. On top of that you miss your family very much, and having reliable internet so you can have a skype call gets to be a very high priority, although you don't usually have so much time to call when they will be at home. I have been lucky to have had lot of work at home in Brussels in the last eighteen months, and also before that in Toronto, where Bruce's home is a very comfortable and familiar place for me to stay, and although he is away teaching much of the time it's much nicer to dine together than to shop, cook and eat for one alone. It's not been since Cork, Ireland, in 2008 that I have been away on my own for a week or more, so it's good practice for Amsterdam.

Okay then, off to bed! Three services tomorrow!