mixed weather... rehearsing for bach, continuing to feel better

The weather here has been mixed; damp and cooler, but today there has been quite a bit of sun.  The weekend was extremely windy and the unsettled weather still continues.

As I wrote last time, I drove Malcolm up to Wilrijk Sunday morning, and when I drove home through a windstorm, it was astonishing how much debris there was on the road.  The debris was of the size and consistency of Ontario 401 snowdrifts, except in this case the drifts weren't made of snow, but rather were leaves, bits of twigs and pieces of bark.  So many trees were blown over that many long sections of the highway were blocked off, and there were countless chainsaw crews out cutting the fallen branches up and clearing the highways.  I've never seen that before in Belgium.

The Frankenstein opera was a pleasure.  Visually beautiful, it owed a lot to cinema, and the music also was cinematic in a very positive way.  Scott sang well and acted with committment; the other soloists were all quite good, although sometimes the orchestration was heavy, and I would have appreciated English subtitles as well as the French and Flemish ones; the chorus texts in particular were almost impossible to understand.  We didn't stay long afterwards but had a glass of beer and then came home.

The car is in the shop today as the back left tire has a slow leak.  Fortunately I have a spare tire of the same model so in the event that they can't fix the leak at least we won't be out a lot of money for a replacement.  We are considering buying a different car, as ours has a collection of minor damages (thank you parking garage) that don't affect its driveability, but are expensive enough that, based on the age of the car, and the cost of repair, the insurance company has decided there is no point in fixing them.  We have to choose now between giving up this car, and accepting a payout of the estimated value of the car before the damages, and using that on our next car, or keeping the car, and accepting a payout of the estimate of the repair cost instead, and doing partial or less expensive repairs.  I think we will do the first choice, as our car is a diesel, and although it is not too old, and the engine is small and efficient, it won't be too many more years before diesel cars of all types will be outlawed in large European cities.  We are thinking about electric cars, just to try to reduce our carbon footprint.  Belgium currently gets 55% of its electricity from nuclear power, and the rest comes from natural gas, so most probably a plug-in car will have the lowest carbon output.  As well the car is most often used by a single driver, or sometimes two people, so we don't need anything big.

I was able to sing through my Johannespassion twice yesterday and am feeling optimistic.  As it turns out I have two more days than I thought at home before I go to Amsterdam, so that is a relief.  I had originally planned to go on Friday, but the schedule has changed, and I see that my ticket is for Sunday.

I had a look at the other soloists in the Matthäuspassion that just came in for April 14th, and they are all indeed of a very high level, but the two tenor soloists are big names.  Belgian tenor Jan van Elsacker is a big deal in the early music community, with an international career.  But the other tenor is the Englishman Charles Daniels, who has a list of Bach recordings as long as your arm, and a huge career.  It's going to be amazing to sing Christus with these singers!