Hoping to be ok for my concert this afternoon

This afternoon is my concert in Ghent, of the Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle in Ghent, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will go well.  I have mustered up enough energy this past week to sing it through several times, and yesterday's rehearsal went reasonably well.

It's been tough going, as I am still recovering from this weird illness.  It's been over two weeks now, and I've had ECGs, chest x-rays; three blood tests for bacterial infections, and also to test for pulmonary embolisms; the doctor has listened to my lungs; everything serious seems to have been ruled out.  But this week I awoke with horrible sweating fits early on Thursday and Friday mornings, and on Thursday my fever started rising again, which is very strange.  Fortunately it now seems to have subsided to normal levels on its own, but the doctor is a bit stumped.

She just called to say that the most recent blood tests show lots of inflammation markers in the blood, which explains why I am so tired.  She also explained that it might be "atypique", not by which I think she means atypical pneumonia.  Atypical in this sense means that the infectious agent is not the normal type; she doesn't speak English and I don't have a lot of medical French vocabulary so I am not sure what she meant on the phone, but she is suspecting that the infectious agent isn't a virus or a bacterium, but something else.  She told me to rest as much as I possibly can, and after this afternoon I plan to do that.  But for this afternoon, I should be able to soldier through with coffee to sharpen my wits, ginger infusion to hydrate me, codeine to calm the cough, and ibuprofen to stop the ache in my chest.  That and a Ricola or two should do the trick.

Some very cool news just came in from the group that I sang the Luther Mass with in October of 2017.  The Thüringer Bachwochen is a week-long festival that takes place in the city or Erfurt, in the German province of Thuringia.  Luther was ordained in Erfurt in 1507, and Bach was born not far away, in Eisenach, in 1685.  Much of his early career was spent in this area.  Of course I have visited Leipzig before, with Bruce in the summer of 2015, so this will be a nice bookend to that trip.  Plus, not only is it music that I recently learned and performed, it is also pretty well paid, and quite prestigious.  As well, it will be televised.  Not bad for my debut in Germany!

What makes it especially gratifying is that it will just squeeze in between Johannespassion in Gran Canarias and my departure to Canada to sing Elijah...  the organisers are confident enough in me that they were willing to let me miss the first day of rehearsals, on the 19th; there are not many flights per day from the Canary Islands, and so there was no way for me to make it back in time to make that rehearsal.  But they are ok with me showing up on the 20th April instead.  Yippee!