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?