Third performance coming up

It's been a little while since my last post... but as you can see above, the flowers from opening night are still keeping fresh.  We've had the generale and two performances since my last post, and Bruce was here for a vacation, so I was otherwise occupied showing him around the town.  But now he's back in Toronto, and as Kris is in Brussels for an audition, I am on my own, and thought that I would write a bit before gearing up for performance number three tonight. 

 

The generale went fine; there were little acting stories to be polished and logistical manouevres to be rearranged, but everything was in good shape, and we had a great opening night last Saturday.  There was a party afterwards and I received a great many interested looks from the mostly Dutch partygoers as I attended in Scottish dress.  The female technicians were the most curious, and demanded to know if the rumours of "regimental" kilt-wearing were true; I replied that while I appreciated their interest, I needed to keep a few secrets to myself...

We celebrated a bit the next day, starting out with a voice lesson... during Bruce's time in Amsterdam we took advantage of my employee privileges to reserve a studio frequently, and so we had a total of five voice lessons, covering the Bach Christmas Oratorio, the St. John Passion arias, two arias of Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet, Belcore's aria from L'elisir d'amore, Valentin's aria from Faust and the Count's aria from Nozze several times, and Fritz's aria from Korngold's Die Tote Stadt.  Whew!  Considering that I haven't had a lesson since last spring it was great, and he is happy with how my voice is sounding.  I am very grateful for the help and support that he has given me, and also honestly glad to sing a lot of music that is more extensive and interesting than the very small part I sing in this Prokofiev opera!  The good news is that the conductor and casting director here agree, and I will be auditioning for them sometime over the next week or so.

As you can see by the smoky photo, we finished off that day with a visit to the Hajenius cigar store, and a nice Partagas and a glass of port in their cigar bar.

We also managed to visit four museums during his stay, thanks to the Amsterdam Museumcard.  It's around fifty euros but is good for one year, and gives access to maybe 35 museums.  It's great because one never has to get fatigued by spending more than a couple of hours in each museum, as you might feel obligated to should you pay for each visit; it's easy to come back another day.  I hadn't visited any museums before on this trip, as our rehearsal schedule was very restrictive, and no one else in the cast seemed interested in seeing the collections... But we made up for it, and saw the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum; the latter had massive security including scanners and even facial recognition software, which I think is new since Maggie, the boys and I visited four years ago.  We also saw the Museum Willet-Holthuysen, which is under a continual process of restoration to make it appear as it did during the late victorian period, when an art collector couple lived there, and the Rembrandthuis, which was Rembrandt's house and studio / gallery for many years.  It is mostly filled with paintings of his contemporaries, but there is a huge exhibit of his engravings, and a studio upstairs where one can participate in an engraving/printmaking workshop in the apprentice's studio... you can bet I will be taking the boys there!

As well we saw two concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; the first was a recital in the small hall, which is one of the most beautiful acoustics in the world.  This was given by my friend Peter Gijsbertsen, the tenor who sang Don Ottavio in our Don Giovanni recently, and it followed a similar concert he gave in London's Wigmore Hall recently.  I was particularly excited as it included Schumann's opus 39 song cycle, which I mean to do with Dina Namer in Canada, and Peter Tomek in Brussels or Vienna sometime soon.  The recital was lovely; I congratulated Peter on his great performance, and hope we can do something else in the future, as I really enjoying singing with this new tenor friend and colleague.

The second concert was a performance of the Messiah of Handel, given by the Amsterdam Baroque Ensemble, in the large hall.  Really gorgeous acoustic; we were seated in consul seats on the stage, behind the orchestra and choir and so could see the face of the conductor throughout, and had a good sense of how it felt to sing in the hall.  I think the last Messiah I attended as an audience member was maybe in 1997; it was certainly before I had ever sung it, and it was great to experience this beautiful piece purely as a listener.

We also did some brocante shopping, and I found a few little presents for Christmas, but also something for myself.  The Baron is a Bavarian, so I was happy to have a little memento of the character in this inexpensive Tyroler jacket, which to me looks as if it was never worn.  Lucky!

Speaking of questions about the Baron, Malcolm was curious about how they made me look older, and so I explained that they apply a bald wig first; this makes me look a bit like Doctor Evil from the Austin Powers movies.  Then they apply a grey hair wig that they have constructed based on a cast of my own head, and then hand-tied hairs of differing tones to really simulate an older me.  I am quite happy with the result, and with the new Hugo Boss "smoking" that they gave me to wear in act IV, as you can see in the photo below, with my elegant fellow Canadian, bass-baritone Alain Coulombe, in burgundy velvet, and the very nice (and very tall) French bass-baritone Guillaume Antoine.  We are ready for the casino again tonight...  Les jeux sont faits!