Piano dress tonight

It has been a busy time here in Amsterdam; I realize that I haven't blogged in almost three weeks.  The time has really been taken up with a lot of rehearsing but also with planning and preparation for other projects.

I had a few days off the weekend before last, and so had a chance to head home for a visit, and catch up with the family.  It is a bit disorienting for everyone, with me being away during the week and sometimes over the weekends, but I realize that that was a reality for my father and his siblings; my grandfather was a structural iron-worker and was involved in building many bridges, hydroelectric dams, and other large civil engineering projects, and so he was away for most of the time.

Still we had some nice meals together, and I made it to church to hear the boys sing.  As well I had a coaching with Peter while I was back, to try to work more on my opera repertoire.  Now that the show is getting ready to open, I will have more time to organize auditions and want to be in good shape.

Speaking of shows opening, I am not the only one with a show; Duncan's Evita opens tonight.  Maggie has had to shuttle him back and forth to the many rehearsals; unlike all of his other activities (school, karate, ballet, theatre) which are accessible on foot or by bus from our front door, we have now had a taste of the role so many parents seem locked into: family chauffeur.  I know that Maggie will be very happy when the production is finished and Duncan can go back to getting himself where he needs to go on foot or by public transit.  About Evita, I saw a few photographs; the production looks very nice, and Duncan will I hope comport himself well.  I'm sorry that I probably won't see the production but that's just how it goes.  Toi toi, Duncan!  Have fun!

Here in Amsterdam I have been enjoying the use of my bicycle; it cuts the commuting time from around 40 minutes to about 20, plus I am getting to see lots of the city, and starting to get my bearings.  One has to budget a little extra time, because there are a number of lift bridges, including this one pictured over the Amstel river, and when barges have to pass through everyone has to wait.

We also saw a little bit of the countryside earlier in the week when we had the first orchestral rehearsal; it was held in Den Haag, a 45 minute bus ride to the west, and everyone was excited to hear this excellent orchestra... for some composers the melodies are so distinctive that you immediately know who wrote the piece; for others, it is the orchestral colours that immediately tell you the composer, and Prokofiev belongs to this second group.  It really sounds amazing.  Of course as a child I had a "Peter and the Wolf" vinyl record, and then later played trombone in the school band, and had a go at "Kije's Wedding" from Prokofiev's film music for Lieutenant Kije, which I loved, so it is really very satisfying to be playing on the stage with these kinds of wonderful colours - mostly from the wind instruments - flowing up from the orchestra pit.

We have already had several rehearsals on the stage, and one with orchestra.  Tonight we will have our piano dress rehearsal with wigs and makeup and our final costumes, so that will be exciting.  Then we have three more rehearsals before we open on the 7th of December.

I also had a nice time last weekend taking the train and bus out to Haarlem, where Maurice and Ana McGinley live with their children.  We met them this past summer in Croatia, and hit it off rather well.  We were happy to resume our conversations and have already made some Christmas plans: Maggie and the boys are planning to come to have Christmas here in Amsterdam, so will be up here for almost a week; the McGinley's have invited us to come for dinner on Christmas Day, and to stay over in their house while they are off in Paris for a couple of days after Christmas.  That will really be an interesting little holiday for us, I think, and I'm looking forward to exploring Amsterdam with the family.

 

In other news I have been planning a lot of travel back and forth to Belgium; I have been asked to sing a Christmas Oratorio in Antwerp for the 22nd of December, so I have agreed to make my way to Antwerp twice in mid-December to rehearse.  I have performed four out of the six parts of this piece before; parts 4 and 5 with Stephanie Martin and parts 1 and 6 with Howard Dyck, both in Toronto.  This time we will do parts 1, 2, 3, and 6, so I will finally get to sing the remaining parts, which is very satisfying, but I do have to learn them!

As well, the Chapelle des Minimes has asked me to sing Bach Cantatas 16 and 65 in January.  BWV 16 has some interesting bits.  The bass sings a recit that ends with the words "O, should not therefore a new song be taken up, and that we sing in fervent love?"; this is followed immediately by the next movement "Let us celebrate, let us rejoice" which is a quite unusual da capo aria for bass and choir.  It will be great to try this unusual structure out!  BWV 65 is an epiphany cantata, and so has lots of orientalism in its texture, to point out that the Kings were from the East.  It has a lot in common textually with the last part of the Christmas Oratorio, and the finale chorale melody also appears in the Matthew Passion.  It's very cool to discover these textual and musical connections, and I'm very happy for my continued relationship with the Chapelle des Minimes; this will be the sixth concert I perform with them, for a total of perhaps ten cantatas.  It's an early Christmas present!

Okay, off to the theatre for wigs and makeup; pictures to follow.

Home for the weekend

 

Last night we had another performance of Don Giovanni in Hasselt, Limburg.  Here are some photos of our production.  Here I am dressed as the Commendatore, and seem to be casting a spell on the Don, played by Werner Van Mechelen; in fact we are about to have a duel, or perhaps I am reacting to his having just stabbed me...

 

In the scene below, Giovanni has commanded Masetto to leave, and has taken away Masetto's new bride, Zerlina (Liesbeth Devos), who he says will accompany him, safe "in the hands of a cavalier".

Here Masetto consoles himself with some heavy drinking, obviously upset at Zerlina's complicity in her seduction by Giovanni.

And here is the confrontation of Giovanni by Donna Elvira (Britt Truyts) while I prepare to temporarily resume the costume of the Commendatore...

These photographs were nicely provided last night by the production team, and were taken I believe during the first performance in deSingel Antwerp.  We have one more performance tomorrow night, and so as I am not called for rehearsal today will stay home with the family in Brussels.

I have had an interesting time the last couple of weeks.  I wrote earlier about our Messiah, but neglected to mention that one of the musicians in the orchestra at that concert said that I greatly resembled Willem Alexander, the King of the Netherlands.  I didn't think that only a couple of weeks' time spent living in Amsterdam would have rubbed off so quickly, but it's not every day that you are told that you resemble a monarch, so I took the compliment. 

Interestingly when I was a very small child, my grandmother Helen kept her hair in a style that to my mind at the time resembled the coiffure of Elizabeth II, so whenever I saw the heads side of a coin, or the Canadian one-dollar bill, I thought it was a picture of my grandmother.  She had that kind of regal stature for me as a toddler.  She also handled her Dodge Dart like a racing driver, which impressed me even more.

I finally caved in and bought a bike at the Waterlooplein flea market, which runs every day at the square behind the Musiektheatre.

Batavus is a good Dutch make, and with three gears and two handbrakes, lights and a wheel lock, I am sure that I will have no trouble reselling this bike at the end of December.  Marie-José at the opera has even suggested that if no buyers are found in the company then I should put up an annonce on the bulletin board and she assures me it will sell.  If not, the vendor agreed to buy it back at half the purchase cost.

Bicycles are king in Holland; here is a photo of the parking garage at the relatively small railway station at Den Haag HS.  It is really sad that downtown Toronto doesn't make cycling more of a priority; if they could only see how well it works in Holland...  maybe we can convince Rob Ford to come try the pharmaceuticals in Amsterdam, so that he could be convinced?

Wisselvallig

Wisselvallig is the Dutch word for wildly variable weather, and that certainly describes what has been happening in Amsterdam today.  This morning there was no rehearsal scheduled, so I slept in, but was awakened by the noise of hailstorms in the back garden, pictured above.

We've spent so much time in rehearsal the last week that my memory is somewhat disjointed, but I do remember that the week began as it ended, with extreme weather.

After last weekend's two days off for our Leuven Don Giovanni performance, my mind was quite disconnected from this production.  This was complicated by the fact that I was called at the last minute to replace a colleague in Messiah, which necessitated some car travel from Brussels to Antwerp and some last-minute rehearsals.  I was thankful - not for the first, nor probably for the last time - for Bruce's exhaustive coaching on this work, which I sang for the first time back in 1998, and after fifteen performances I know that I could sing the Messiah tonight on 30 seconds' notice if I had to.  All went well, and after two nights at home, I rushed back to Amsterdam Sunday evening, only to have to wait: early monday morning the city was struck with wind storms with gusts up to 140 kph, and this toppled trees, pulled down the tram lines, delayed a number of flights for cast members, and in at least one case caused the death of a Dutch couple when their houseboat was crushed by a falling tree.  As the tram lines were down there were no trams and so we had to walk to the theatre, which took the better part of an hour.  Even so we spent a lot of time waiting as there were successive delays of our rehearsal, in the hopes that all cast members would arrive.  Here is Kris pictured above during the walk to the theatre, trying to stay dry.

The people of Amsterdam did their best to adjust but they were really taken aback by the ferocity of the wind, and seemed quite shell-shocked.  It was strong enough to knock over planters and locked bicycles, and many people stayed indoors, so the city had a sort of post-apocalyptic feel to it, like something from a movie.

 
But fortunately, by the end of the day things were back more or less to normal, and by Tuesday morning we were in full swing with the staging rehearsals, held from the first day in working costumes while the final costumes are being made.  I'm quite happy with the Act 1 costume of Baron Wurmerhelm, as he gets to wear nice lederhosen... let's just say that I'm doing my best to channel Christopher Plummer and humming Edelweisse under my breath.  We were able to finish Act 1 yesterday morning, so we finally staged the bit where the Baron has his solo, and so I gave a little sigh of relief now that that is over with.  Small parts where one has only a few lines to sing are far more stressful than big ones, where one has much more time to make a good impression vocally.  But to be honest, Andrea has been easy to work with, and I find myself anticipating what she wants without her having to say it.  As well, Marc Albrecht our conductor has said that he is interested in hearing me sing a real audition, so I must get my voice in shape for the baritone repertoire after these Don Giovanni performances are over and done with.  I have lots of inspiration all around me; our Don Giovanni, Werner Van Mechelen, is singing Alberich in Götterdämmerung, which opens in a few days here in our theatre.  The set is really fantastic, and the Brünnhilde is Catherine Foster of England, who was a midwife until perhaps fifteen years ago, when she made her career change and started singing opera.  Quite an inspiring story, don't you think?!

 

As always some cast members are easier to get to know than others, but it's a challenge to remember everyone's name as there are more than 30 characters in The Gambler... It helps that the staff in de Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam are really like a family, with a very comfortable attitude, despite the high number of productions that they undertake each year.  Midweek we had the yearly staff "drink", which helped a little at breaking the ice for our cast.  This little party included many returning extras and chorus members; the evening ended with the presentation of "The Golden Eyelash / De Gulden Wimper", an award presented to the best "extra" of the season.  It is named for a long-serving extra, also named Wimper, pictured below, second from right... also pictured is John Daszak far left (our tenor lead "Alexei") and Kris Belligh who plays the "unlucky gambler" far right.  John is a powerful singer, very sociable, and as a transplanted Englishman (he lives with his wife and children in Stockholm) he is very happy to share a pint, and there have been a couple of opportunities to do so thus far.

Today was a quiet day; I managed to get my laundry done and hung up to dry.  I also had a little walkabout to find some dinner ingredients.  For my birthday meal this evening it was roast chicken, elevated in the roasting pan over an improvised "rack" made of carrots, garlic and onions; also I made potato wedges in olive oil, and brussels sprouts simmered in cream, which is a Timothy Vernon recipe that I got from Bruce, that is really super easy and very delicious.

Dinner was interrupted by the rattle of more hailstorms.  I haven't bought a bike yet, choosing instead to rely upon the trams, and if this weather continues I don't know that I'll bother to buy one.  Can you believe it, two hailstorms in one day?  Bizarre.

Now that we are into the normal rhythm this week should go smoothly.  I do need to arrange things with the production team so that I can sing my last two performances of Don Giovanni, in Hasselt and in Heist-op-dem-Berg; the opera administration here has already agreed to giving me the NA (not available) for each day, but a lot depends on how staging goes, and the most convenient high speed train leaves at 13h18, while our rehearsals normally end at 13h30.  Ideally I will be able to get away a little early, and also won't have to come back in between the performances, and so can have some family time in the interval.  Fingers crossed.

About the Don Giovanni, it seems to have been a success...  The Flemish arts channel did a more involved video segment on our production, that can be viewed here.  I'm not quite sure why I get so much screen time, but it's flattering!