Remembrance of a different sort

I feel like I've been on the run since mid October! No posts for a couple weeks reflects my high level of musical activity recently. It's been a very challenging couple of weeks, one filled both with much preparation for upcoming concerts, and performances, but also full of the theme of Remembrance.


All Saints' Day is an important holiday here in Belgium, and everyone takes the time to remember those who have died. On a personal note of remembrance, our family said goodbye recently to my Grandmother Helen Gillespie, who died in September of this year. I was unable to go back to Canada for the funeral, but fortunately our family had several opportunities to visit with her when we were back in Canada, and she was in good spirits and energetic for those visits. I'm glad that we took those opportunities to spend some time with her. I was lucky enough to have a close relationship with her, as did both boys, and we kept up a written and telephone correspondence for many years.


Remembrance for me has also included some commemorations of the life and work of fellow artists. In the week leading up to the Hunting Cantata concert of October 24th, I heard the sad news that Pierre Fleta, Bruce's mentor, had died in Paris at the age of 85.

There is little information available online about Pierre, so I would like to say a few words about him now. He was a beautiful tenor singer, a committed teacher, and a gifted artist. The son of Miguel Fleta, himself perhaps the most famous tenor of his generation, Pierre lived with Beniamino Gigli while completing his voice studies. He debuted as Cavardossi in Tosca, sang at La Monnaie in Brussels for six years, notably as Alfredo and Hoffmann, and sang for many years in many European opera houses including Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon, Nice, Bordeaux, and Montpellier. In 1972 he became the artistic director of the Opera Royale de Wallonie in Liege, and shortly thereafter was named professor of voice at the Liege Conservatory. For the following 20 years he staged many productions there and in France, Spain and Monaco before retiring to Paris, and subsequently moving with his beloved wife Claude to the village of Millau, near Montpellier, in the south.

Bruce and I visited Pierre and Claude in 2005, and I was lucky enough to sing for him then, and again during subsequent visits to Montpellier in 2007. He was a wonderfully warm person, and a gifted teacher, deeply committed to encouraging young singers. While he made many recordings for the French label Pathé, there are few available online. Here is one clip I found of him singing a patriotic french chanson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yr5R4qAB2g

Bruce was in Victoria at the time of the funeral, but I was able to take the fast train to Paris and get to Montrouge in time for the service, and pay our respects the the Fleta family, before returning to Antwerp for my rehearsal of the Hunting Cantata that same evening. I am glad that I did, to help honour this remarkable artist.

The following week I spent time preparing for last night's Music of Remembrance concert here in Brussels. (I'll write about that in my next post). The week of November 1-5 was the Toussaint school holiday, and we put the boys in a residential programme for the week at the castle in the Ardennes, and Maggie and I went to Vienna to celebrate my birthday.


As you can see, the Hotel Bristol puts on a nice breakfast! Vienna was gorgeous, as majestic in architecture as Paris, but on a scale that reminded me more of Brussels, in that it was possible to move easily around the old city on foot or by metro.


We saw many fantastic museum exhibitions, including the Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Biedermeier exhibits at the Belvedere Museum, Michaelangelo and Picasso works at the Albertina, and a host of fantastic displays at the natural history museum, including quite a few amazing fossils such as archaeopteryx and some ichthyosaurs. We also say probably the most famous piece of prehistoric art in the world, the 22,000 year-old Venus of Willendorf.

The age of this female human figure is mind-boggling; when you consider that it's been 2000 years since the time of Jesus, and this figure is at least ten times older than that, it gives you pause. It makes me think about all the human stories that have passed, now forgotten in that span of time, and wonder what people will know of today's events in the year 24,000 AD...

We toured the Staatsoper, and visited the Mozarthaus. There was a manuscript score of Marriage of Figaro on display, and at it was quite a profound experience for me to sing a few lines of Conte Almaviva there, in the room in which it was composed. The museum was very informative, with lots of great exhibits including Mozart's death mask:


I made my pilgrimage to the central cemetery, to visit the resting places of several great composers. The location of Mozart's grave is unknown, but there is a monument to his memory in a little grove of trees:


and with him are Beethoven,

Brahms,


Schubert,


Wolf,


and the opera composer Gluck.


I was very happy to have the chance to pay my respects to these wonderful composers, to thank them for the beauty that their music has added to the world.

Speaking of beautiful music, that evening we lined up for standing room places to see Die Zauberflöte. Imagine, for four euros each, we had really the best view and sound of the stage! It was great! You can see the standing places on the parterre in this photo, just behind the orchestra seating, under the imperial box.


The Staatsoper has a huge stage area, with elevating platforms that make up the front and rear stages, each 25 by 25 metres, and a side stage of the same size, plus an understage that covers the combined area. They have about 150 operas in repertory, and stage 50 different productions a year, with a different show every night of the week. Changing all those sets around employs perhaps 300 technicians, and they use all that stage space for quick scene changes, because if means you can be arranging the set on one platform and then quickly and silently move it into place using the elevators.


Seeing all the people involved in the production, and indeed all of the economic benefits that Viennese art and culture bring to the people of Vienna makes me understand how ignorant are those who consider arts to be a "frill". While this particular "frill" may require state subsidy to continue, along with employing singers, musicians and directors, it keeps 300 macho guys with power tools busy every day of the year, employs set builders, costume designers, sewers, set decorators, lighting technicians, ushers and cashiers, and provides beauty and enjoyment to thousands of people. It also injects millions of Euros into the local economy in hotel and restaurant purchases.

Ok, enough preaching about the arts, at least for now. What a wonderful trip!

* * *

This past week was a resumption of our normal family schedule, with lots of rehearsing, not only for last night's concert, but also for upcoming performances of Franck (tomorrow in Tervuren), two Bach Cantatas (Nov. 21st in Brussels), Purcell's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (Nov. 26th in Kingston) and Bach in Toronto December 4th and 5th. I'm looking forward to a day without singing, a glass of whisky and a good cigar, but I doubt that will happen until after the 5th of December. Until then I have a lot of work to do, so I'm signing off for the moment.

Hunting Season

Sunday's concert was a wonderful experience, and signaled the opening of the traditional hunting season in Belgium. The choice of works was interesting, and included the Hunting Cantata, another secular Cantata, and a lot of dramatic hunting horn ensemble playing by a group of red-coated players, the Royal Antwerp Hunting Horn Society. As you can see we are all enjoying a glass in the square after the concert (in my case, a Duvel).

This was a very interesting concert for me, as it was Bach's Lutheran music, to German texts, with hunting as a theme; these are all things that remind me very much of my late Grandfather, a German Lutheran hunter himself! Another interesting conection comes from our commune here in Brussels: Watermael-Boitsfort's coat of arms displays the hunting horn and the stag, symbolizing Saint-Hubertus himself, as a reflection of this area's history as an area historically rich in wildlife. I recently found a vintage poster advertising the commune, and on it you can see St. Hubertus and the coat of arms very clearly.


Lastly, with people talking about hunting season, I couldn't help but think about this.

But back to "serious", as opposed to Chuck Jones' comedic art... Performing this music in Rubens' own baroque Catholic church added a lot to the experience, and the orchestra was made up of many very accomplished baroque musicians. This was my first time performing with Paul Van Loey, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, conductor and co-founder of the Flanders Recorder Quartet, but we are looking forward to working together again on three performances of Messiah next spring.

Now it's time to practice for the Remembrance Day concert I'm preparing with Piers Maxim, and to refresh my memory on the Franck music for the 13th. That will come sooner than it seems, since Maggie and I will be exploring Vienna for the week of November 1st - 5th, so that's a week less preparation time. The Ned Rorem War Scenes are in particular a challenge to learn, as they are modern, chromatic and sometimes very angular, with much unaccompanied singing punctuated by interjections by the piano; not bumpity-bump music at all! Fortunately the other music on the programme (Dover Beach, Brahms Serious Songs, Faure and Handel etc.) is much better known to me, so for those pieces it's a matter of re-examination. One important exception will be the Brussels premiere of a Canadian piece: Eleanor Daley's setting of John McRae's In Flanders Fields.

"I'll be Baaaaach"

Hey there. It looks like my Bach voice is getting a real workout these days, as I now have seven cantatas, all new to me, to perform over six weeks:

• BWV 207 Vereinigtre Zweitracht der wechselnden Saiten and 208 Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd! (October 24th), Sint-Carolus Borromeus, Antwerp
• BWV 82 Ich habe genug (excerpts, November 11th), St. Andrew's Church of Scotland, Brussels
  
• BWV 70 Wachet! betet! betet! Wachet! and 90 Es reißet euch ein schrecklich Ende (November 21st), La Chapelle des Minimes, Brussels
• BWV 248 Weihnachts-Oratorium and Cantata BWV 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme (December 4, 5), Grace Church-on-the-Hill, Toronto

The Ich habe genug excerpts will be part of a larger concert that we are doing for Remembrance Day. Here is the poster:


So what else has been going on? Well, we had a great weekend, for a start. Saturday we went to the Bois de la Cambre and picnicked together with Stephane and his three kids, then got dressed up for Das Rheingold. I suppose we could have dressed down a little, since it was in the cinema, and there was no intermission to be seen at, but we all went to the trouble of looking nice. The boys were captivated; Malcolm knows more about Norse mythology than I do, so he was happy. Maggie liked Robert Lepage's hi-tech sets, and the costumes, and Duncan was able to keep up with most of the English subtitles. He asked a few questions but for the most part just took it all in. I loved the music, and my favorite was hands-down the Alberich, sung fantastically by Eric Owens.


Then Sunday we had a nice barbeque, and then headed off to see the Steve Miller Band in Antwerp. They were great, and along with the hits from Steve's heyday (1975-1985) they played a lot from their new album, Bingo! which was very heavy on the electric blues. Particularly good was Steve's new sideman and vocalist, Sonny Charles, who at 70 was amazing.

This week Duncan is away with his class on a week-long field trip, so it's a lot quieter around here than normal. It's been much colder, but at least it's been sunny and dry, so I hope he is having fun in Nettinne. Have a good week!