Six months

So this week past was a busy one, attested to by the absence of a blog post since Feb. 15th. We had a lot of fun last weekend visiting the Star Wars Exhibition; Maggie has already posted her take on it; I actually think despite the complaining that she liked it even more than the boys, due to the large number of costumes and maquettes from the films.

What else? On Thursday we passed the six month anniversary of our arrival here in Belgium; we've had a couple of barbeques recently thanks to our neighbors J. and K. lending us their Weber charcoal grill; Malcolm got 19/20 on his French dictée test and 7/10 in times table/division; Duncan demonstrated that he can climb the rope ladder to the treehouse himself, and Maggie is hitting her stride at her new job.

I've been looking up houses and apartments here in Watermael-Boitsfort, and have found quite a few in our budget, but it really is too early; the ones available for viewing are ready to rent now, and so I'll really have to get on the house search in earnest in late May/early June. Still I saw a very nice, extremely spacious apartment on Friday that would have been perfect, and was well within budget; I'm looking at another place this afternoon that is within a stone's throw of the school. If I devote a the time to searching at the right moment, I'm sure we'll find a good place, and there are a lot of neighbors who have their eyes peeled for a place, including Eric, our neighborhood policeman, who took down my particulars and told me he'd let me know if he saw anything. Community policing at its best!

This week I decided that I wasn't getting quite enough exercise pulling a grocery cart on the 15-minutes-each-way walk to the nearest Delhaize, and finally started swimming again. Length swimming is something I was really quite good at as a teenager, and in the two years before I met Maggie I had done extensive lake swimming, as well as a routine of a kilometer or so every morning in the pool at Queens's University. In fact, I even swam across the local reach of Lake Skootamatta - with best man Peter Hejny spotting me in a canoe - the morning of the day I got married.

So it's a bit surprising that it's taken me this long to actually get around to exploring the local pool, Calypso. It's a nice-size, about 33 metres long, and much-utilized by the inhabitants of the commune. This goes for the local schools too; Malcolm has been swimming here once a week as part of his physical education classes. With all that activity, it's taken me two or three days to find a good time to come when I can have a lane to myself, but around midday is best. I've never liked sharing swim lanes, I find it's very difficult to find your breathing pace when you are constantly having to adjust your speed based on other swimmers, which is one reason why I love lake swimming so much. Friday I managed almost a half-hour of front crawl, or about 30-40 lengths; that works out to maybe a kilometer, which is a good start.

I plan to keep this up as part of my daily routine; I've found that the mornings are better for slow vocal warmups interspersed with calling houses and agents, followed by swimming around noon, then lunch and a solid hour and half of singing, and then it's time to get Malcolm from school. As long as I'm still searching for singing work this routine should be maintained, and it'll help me feel and look better on the stage when I do get the chance to audition or perform.

Saturday afternoon I had a very satisfying audition in Ghent, for an agent there... it was a bit difficult to find the place where the auditions were being held, but once I found it they were very nice, and I was pleased to sing the Count's aria, followed by the Harlekino. The audition hall had a raked stage, and so it was great to prowl around it a bit after so many weeks singing in the dining room, or in audition halls. In fact the only other auditions I've sung on a stage here were for the ZBF in Cologne, and the one in Liège. I felt great after the audition, whatever happens... the only way to get good at singing auditions is by... you guessed it, singing a lot of them!

Apart from an upcoming audition here in Brussels for a visiting conductor from Paris, next month, my current focus is the opera companies in the southern part of France: Montpellier, Marseille, Lyon, Nice, etc. Pierre Fleta, Bruce's teacher, lives close to Montpellier with his wife, and so I'm planning a trip down there now that Brussels Airlines is offering their seat sale; flights to Nice for example are quite cheap, as low as 30 Euros each way, taxes included, so why not? It'd be great to study with him some more now that my french is better; I had some time with him in 2005 that was really exciting, but I'm so much further along in my technique now than I was even then.

This weekend was an entertaining one: after I got back from Ghent, we met the babysitter (Guillaume, who is 17 and loves rugby, a good match for Duncan) and then headed down the street to Bryan and Kiana's, where we enjoyed our first night out without the kids since our trip to DeHaan courtesy of my parents, in early December. We stayed out quite late and had a great time with Bryan, Kiana, their two children, dog, and three cats. We sure miss Kiki!

We followed it up immediately with a nice barbeque in our garden yesterday afternoon with Denis and Florence and their son Raphael, our neighbors from a couple doors over. Couscous, lamb chops on the grill, caesar salad and some banada chocolate cake that Maggie invented. The weather was again warm enough for jeans and t-shirts, at least for the boys and I.

Now we're all leisured-out and ready for another week; it's sunny here now, and I must get going at my daily routine. Have a good week!

Swimming in february?

It has been a bit colder and foggy the last few days, but today we're back to bright sunshine, and warmer temperatures. Last week we had several days in a row with temperatures in the teens, and so we warmed up the pool with a little help from the boiler in the basement, and the boys have been swimming a couple of times, including Malcolm's swim with his friend Simonas last Wednesday afternoon. I've even gone for a dip too. Quite decadent!

We're trying to make the most of the time we have in this house, as we've been searching around to find apartments in this neighborhood, and I'm positive that we won't find anything priced even remotely closely to this house for size and amenities. The good news is that we will definitely be able to find something for less rent, but it will probably be a much smaller apartment, and unfurnished. Still, it shouldn't be too hard to find used things at the many brocantes or street sales, and then there's the St. John's School sale in April, and there's always IKEA.

We've had contacts from two different potential tenants, inquiring about our house in Toronto; both are physicians who will be working at hospitals in Toronto until the summer of 2010, and so are asking for 24 month leases.... we've been talking all along about a longer stay in Belgium, but this would definitely be a step that confirms those intentions... we haven't signed anything to that effect yet, but after six months here, we've found the transition from Canada pretty easy to make, and are feeling ever more confident about a longer stay.

I had a great singing day yesterday, and worked through a bunch of French arias, Dieu qui me poursuivrez from Iphigenie en Tauride by Glück, then O sainte medaille / Avant de quitter ces lieux from Faust by Gounod, then L'orage s'est calmé / O Nadir from Pearl Fishers by Bizet and then O vin dissipe la tristesse from Hamlet by Thomas. I hadn't tried the Hamlet or the Glück for years, and they felt great in the voice; I guess all this French speaking is paying off. Then it was time for a little Schubert, so I did a couple of lieds from Die Schöne Müllerin. According to Bruce, it's good for the voice to mix it up a little and sing different stuff just for fun, to stretch and push the voice a bit and keep it flexible.

Its also important to get a broader repertoire ready for next week, when I have an audition for an agency in Antwerp. They have requested that I prepare two opera arias, an oratorio recit and aria, and a French chanson or a German lied. I think I'll do my Mozart "Count" aria (Italian), and the Valentin from Faust (French), and then do from Thus saith the Lord / But who may abide from Messiah (English) and then some Schubert (German).

But back to last night. As I finished singing, it was nearing six o'clock, so I poured Maggie and myself a glass of Spanish Freixenet sparking white wine, and we sat down to a nice St. Valentine's dinner. The children ate first, enjoying my homemade chicken-noodle soup, fresh yellow peppers and carrots and hunks of crusty baguette. After they had gone to bed, Maggie and I sat back down to a nice leisurely meal that she had prepared, of garlic shrimps, broad white beans in a Spanish tomato sauce. I chose the wine, which was a Torres "Saint Valentin" red, and brought out an assortment of cheeses, followed by a little Vecchia Romana brandy and some handmade artisanal chocolates that I surprised her with from L'Achimie du chocolat, a little shop near the university.

A dinner alone together was really very pleasant, and makes me realize that we haven't dined out together at all, except with the children, and usually at lunchtime. I must make some arrangement to get babysitting for the boys worked out, so that we can go out together and have a romantic evening together every once in a while. It's so important to keep couple-only time in the schedule, otherwise your life ends up being all about the kids, to everyone's detriment.

Speaking of the kids, I've only got another two hours or so before I have to pick up Malcolm, so I'd better get going if I want to get anything done. This weekend we're going to do a communal barbeque with Jonathan and Kristin and family. As well, I've found something very cool that is opening here in Brussels tomorrow, and I have a strong feeling (call it a "tremor in the force") that the boys and I will be going to this exposition at our earliest opportunity...

spring is here...

...at least in Brussels.

I'm really amazed at the great weather here... it was at least 16 degrees and open blue sky here today, and it was the same yesterday. We have a forecast that is sunny and warm all week to come. It's quite a contrast with what I'm hearing is happening in Toronto, with lots of snow, and in other parts of Canada such as Manitoba, where it's reportedly -50 degrees with the wind chill. Brrr!

It's been a busy week, so I've not posted for a while; the boys have been off school for the week for the congé de carnaval so the house has not been a quiet and tranquil place. Maggie has been off as well, so we've all been making the most of spending time together. We've managed to have two solid TV-free days in a row, which has been nice, involving lots of playing in the garden and in the tree fort, working in the yard, eating lunch outside, etc. Malcolm has spent hours playing with a garden rocket made from a water bottle, inner tube valve, champagne cork, and bike pump, all of which were found or recycled, thanks to instructions in the Dangerous Book for Boys, and Duncan has been happy to watch, and play soccer with his friend Matt who lives around the corner.

When we haven't been outside we've been catching up on reading. Malcolm, having devoured Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn has moved on to Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, and is almost finished it... I'll have to find something else quickly to keep him occupied. Fortunately Maggie has access to lots of good novels for young readers through her school library, so she can bring something home for him. Duncan meanwhile is doing lots of pre-reading behaviour himself, as well as art and imaginative play with his Playmobil knights set, something that keeps him very pleasantly occupied. He still is playing the piano and guitar, and singing a lot...

... as am I. The solo audition I sang at La Monnaie a week ago Thursday went really well: I was well prepared, in a positive and confident frame of mind, felt that the planets were aligned in my favour, knew the accompanist, and I think these factors greatly influenced my singing. As I might have explained before, simply obtaining this audition was a success for me, since my initial requests to audition were not successful until, through persistence and some luck, the situation changed.

This audition was not for a role, but purely as an introduction to the casting director, but still I felt very energized by the whole thing. In a way these "speculative" auditions are better than ones for specific parts, because the singer gets to decide what he or she wants to showcase, and can play more to their strengths. In an audition where they are looking for a specific type of voice, or even a narrower repertoire, one has a little less freedom...

That was the case in another audition I sang in Liège this past Thursday, in which they requested three Italian arias, preferably including a Verdi one. Since I don't have a Verdi aria, and only had two Italian arias worked up, it necessitated a lot of work to finish getting Bella siccome un angelo from Don Pasquale up to speed to present; I really didn't have time to learn a Verdi aria from scratch. As it was, I only got a chance to sing one aria, and heard later that same night that I didn't get the part I was auditioning for. Still, I now can say that I've sung on the stage of the Opéra Royale de Wallonie, (even if it was in audition) something that I've wanted to do for years. More importantly the casting team including the general director have heard me, seen my photograph and read through my c.v., and have me on file. I hope to sing for them again soon, for something else.

I requested to sing early in the audition period in Liège because I had previously-made plans to attend a performance of Handel's Giulio Cesare here in Brussels at La Monnaie. Fortunately the train schedule allowed for it, so I joined two friends to experience this production staged by Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann and directed by René Jacobs. Handel's opera is very long, almost four hours, and the set was something I'd never seen used before... the stage had narrow grooves running across it, and sticking up through these grooves were rows of translucent reeds that moved soundlessly back and forth to set new scenes, or sometimes moved during arias themselves. The characters could hide in the bullrushes, as it were, or part them and climb through, pursue each other, struggle, etc., and boats and other vehicles could appear to "float" along the tops of the reeds.

At first I was skeptical about whether the reeds themselves could provide enough interest for an entire opera, but by act two I was convinced that the idea was a good one, especially when the reeds were bolstered with the appearance of strange alchemical rolling vehicles, and colourful lighting effects. A particularly magical moment, and my favorite of the evening happened in act two, when a portion of the orchestra played on the stage... one aria for Julius Caesar that was really a trio with two horn players was particularly satisfying, and demolished for me completely the notion that any barrier existed between the singer and musicians... fantastic!

I gradually came to realize that the reeds, and the set itself, were highly stylized versions of, and owed a great debt to, baroque opera special effects, in particular the intricate and fabulous mechanical sets that were used in the 18th-century to create illusions of the sea, clouds, ships and monsters, and so on. The Drottingholm theatre in Stockholm is one house that still maintains these incredible pieces of stage machinery, and they have appeared in film many times, notably in Bergman's film of The Magic Flute, and in Terry Gilliam's Baron Munchausen.

Anyway it was a splendid time, with lots of very accomplished singing, as the singers were without exception extremely talented vocally, and very good actors too. They enjoyed the support of a very disciplined yet natural-sounding orchestra.

Tomorrow we are heading off to the Antwerp zoo with the kids. I'm sure I'll have lots to report next time!