Heading back home to Brussels

Just a quick post before I leave for the airport...

The workshop of "The Auction", the new chamber opera by John Burge, went very well. It was great to sing through the first act and to get a better sense of the overall arc of the piece. Everyone is looking forward to seeing what John and Eugene Benson, the librettist, will do with act II; based on the present libretto, the narrative ends with a duet section between the "old" and "young" characters of the grandfather, sung by Bruce and myself.

I don't really know if that has happened very often in operas, so that's an exciting idea. I remember that the Poul Ruders adaptation of the Handmaid's Tale, a fantastic production that I saw in Toronto a few years back, used this device, with Stephanie Marshall and Krisztina Szabo (shown below in a still from the production) doing double-duty on the character of Offred, to chilling and wonderful effect. In any case it's going to be fun to do the same in John's new work.


In other news, our new tenants are well established in the house now, and they are really nice people. Again, our main regret in renting our house to them is that we won't be around to get to know them as much as we'd like to! I needed to devote some time this past week to getting to know them, and while we had extensive work done on the house this summer, there were still a number of small repairs that I needed to make myself. Now these are completed, and they should be well set up in the house for the duration of their lease, for the next two years.

Some good news: I've just received some inquiries about further work in Europe; it never rains but it pours, it seems! I don't wish to jinx it before contracts are signed, but it looks like I will be doing another Haydn Creation, this time in german, and a Mendelssohn Paulus, both in Belgium. I also received an offer of another St. John Passion that I rather frustratingly had to turn down, because it conflicts with next March's Canada performances of Schubert, the Creation (in english) and the "No Tenors Allowed" concert that Bruce and Dina and I are presenting in Ottawa.

It's fantastic to have directors calling me instead of the other way around, but I'm not expecting that to continue; there are many more auditions and phone calls I have to make, to keep things moving for next season, and the one after that... They say in sales that if you are having a slow week, it really means that you had a slow week six months ago; the "business cycle" for opera is longer than that, frequently eighteen months for artists at my current level, and even longer for the big stars, who book roles several years in advance. I think next season I'm going to try to spend the "passion season" in Europe; the appetite for the Bach passions seems inexhaustible in Holland and Germany, and I want to further expand my profile in those countries next...

It is beautiful weather in Toronto, so I'm a little sad to leave, but am looking forward to getting home. It's only been a little more than a week, so the family is ok, but professionally I have no time to waste... I have a meeting with the Echevin de la Culture of Ixelles the day after I get back, to discuss the Die Schone Mullerin project there, and then I start rehearsing immediately with Peter to get ready for the first rehearsals of La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein this weekend...

UK and Scotland part V, and the first bit of school

We had a great concert last night, to help raise funds for the new organ at St. Andrews... it suffered... wait for it... massive organ failure recently, and the new one is going to cost a pretty penny. There are three concerts to benefit the organ fund already planned, and we are already a good way towards our goal.

Piers, Penni, Naomi and Francesca and I all had our turns, and it was a wonderful time, and very well received by a nicely full house. This morning I was up early and over to Peter's to coach; I leave tomorrow morning early for Canada, to do this new chamber opera by John Burge, and so we looked at that, and at the Offenbach which I begin rehearsing with the company the weekend after I return to Brussels on the 20th of September. Things are really piling up and so I have to try to work ahead as much as I can.

I must finish off the summer blog posts, since it's been several weeks now since we returned home to Brussels... Suffice it to say that we enjoyed our last couple of days in Garvald, and said goodbye to Rob and Viki and Katie, with many plans to meet again soon, either in Portugal or perhaps in Canada. We took a more direct route south this time, but did stop in at Hadrian's Wall, taking a moment to explore a little in the village of Wall, which figures prominently in the Neil Gaiman book Stardust, and the film of the same name.


No witches, wizards or goblin markets were in evidence, so we continued south, and made our way to York where we stayed quite affordably and comfortably at the Hilton. It was our 14th wedding anniversary that day, so after a pint of local bitter in a pub, we decided to celebrate at a hole-in-the-wall place called "Ate-o-clock" named aptly, as one had to enter through a long limestone alley... I was reminded very much of dinners at Chez Piggy in days gone by, in Kingston.

Right across from the entrance of the Hilton is the medieval Clifford’s Tower, which stands on a hill; when I went out for a walk early the next morning a soccer team was running a series of laps up and down the stairs and couldn't help humming he marched them up to the top o' the hill and he marched them down again for the rest of the day.


I had risen early that morning for the chance to get to Yorkminster Cathedral for matins, and the early service. I arrived by mistake half an hour early, and so was the only person there, and was able to walk around the cathedral as the early morning sun began to illuminate the sanctuary. Surprisingly for me the service was held in the side chapel, and there were only a few people in attendance: two priests officiating, a man who resembled a religous student, a nun, and one other person, a youngish woman who was obviously on a cycling tour. No music at all, which was a bit strange (I wonder if they even sing at evensong) but still I found participating in the service and taking communion in such an historic place to be a very serene experience, and it set me up well for the rest of the day.

I went back to the hotel and we packed things up, but delayed our checkout a little, in order to investigate the Jorvik viking centre just down the street. It was an excellent museum with lots of exhibits that enlightened and entertained. Many artifacts have been found preserved by the oxygen-poor clays underneath the modern city of York, and these testify to the fact that Scandinavian York was a major centre of viking power in the 9th and 10th centuries. The "viking" conquest of England was so successful indeed that most of the north was under the control of the Yorkshire Scandinavian kings for almost one hundred years, prior to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. After our earlier exploration of Roman buildings in Bath, and the Elizabethan Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth, we were glad to see an exhibit that explored some of the interval between those two epochs of British history.

But there was more historical - and prehistorical- exploration to come, once we made it south to London and met our friends Ros and Joe and Orla. Since we met in Corsica two summers ago, we had only spent an quick afternoon in their company, visiting the Tower of London, but it was like no time had gone by. They were very glad to welcome us to Croydon, and generously opened their home to us.

I wish that we had much more time to visit with them, but we made the most of the two days we had. Joe is an incredible mimic of accents, and had us all in stitches, and Ros was an exceptional tour guide. Orla, their daughter, is poised and articulate, and just like the boys is a big Doctor Who fan. The day after our arrival we made for the natural history museum downtown, and Ros and Orla met us there after their morning appointments... here's Orla drawing a Dalek while we stopped for refreshments:


The Natural History Museum in London has some of the most famous fossils in the world, and I had the feeling that we could have gone there every day for a week, and would have barely cracked the place. Wonderful! The very term "dinosaur" was coined by Richard Owen, who, with the support of Queen Victoria, founded this very museum, and it has somehow managed to preserve its wonderful Victorian architecture while adding modern exhibits that fit well into the overall composition. We saw loads of stuff on geology, plate tectonics, earthquakes, erosion, and then the vertebrate paleontology exhibits, and then the extensive mammal exhibit, with a famous blue whale skeleton. It's big.


We spent the whole day in the museum, and didn't even make it to the Tate, or the Victoria and Albert, which were both on the list - next time - before returning together to Croydon that evening, for dinner, conversation and a little single malt whisky. The next morning we had the classic full English breakfast, and wistfully hit the road in good time to catch the tunnel train back to Brussels. We left with a promise to return, and left many warm invitations behind us.

* * *

So that's about it for the vacation. The last week of August was spent with the boys in stages, Maggie prepping for school, and me learning new music, doing financial tasks and tele-coordinating repairs on our Toronto home, which needed some considerable work this summer to bring it up to standard again. We have some new tenants in it now, and I'm looking forward to meeting them this coming week.

The boys have had a good rentrée scolaire so far; Malcolm is liking his new school very much, especially his latin teacher, who is fond of giving the students latin nicknames and peppering her talk with latin expressions. He's settled in well to the new routine of different classes each day, and rides the bus and tram easily, frequently walking with a couple of other students who live in our neighborhood, and comparing notes about the different instructors. Outside of class, he's been hard at work with his music practice, and is keeping on this year with flute and theory classes.


Duncan is taking more responsibilities now, as befits a boy in third grade, and he walks to school with his friend Fritz, and makes his own way by tram to the music academy for his music theory lessons. He's really enjoying being back at school with his buddies, and his new teacher has remarked on how well he's doing already, getting lots of "perfect" papers back.


In terms of other activities Duncan was on the waiting list for saxophone, but has taken up the clarinet instead; I think he was impressed by the "cool jazz dude" clarinet teacher. As well, we have just heard that he has been accepted into the drama class, so that means he'll be spending a lot of time at the music academy this year. They are doing The Sound of Music for the end-of-year spectacle, and he knows it very well already, in french too. Fortunately the academy is very convenient to us, since the bus line goes right past our house, and he is very familiar with the route, having ridden it last year with his brother, so there will be no soccer mom-ing or dad-ing for us; he can tell time, he's got a bus pass, and he can go on his own.

Okay, that's about it. Have a good weekend, and I'll hope to write more after the opera workshop.

p.s. I'm hoping Maggie will blog again soon; she's up to her elbows in her new teaching roles, doing geography and history, as well as tech for grade sixes, but maybe she'll procrastinate from her preparations and write a little something soon...

Scotland and England summer trip: part the fourth

As the road leaves Glencoe and begins to head north in the direction of Loch Ness, it passes several smaller lochs... we saw old granite mountains covered in fir trees, stooping down to misty lakes... people were camping to fish along the shore, and as we stopped at one viewing spot, the slow rain and woodsmoke gave me a vivid recollection of early mornings in Algonquin Park. I was struck by a sudden twinge of nostalgia for Canada's shield country...

Interestingly, there might well be a good geographical reason for this... the Great Glen fault - along which Loch Ness lies - was formed about 400 million years ago, at the collision point between the Laurentian and Baltic plates, when the supercontinent Euramerica was formed, but the rocks found there are a lot older. I would imagine that they are quite similar in composition and age to those of the pre-Cambrian shield that is so familiar to eastern Canadians. Yes, I did say "Laurentian" plate, as in the Laurentian mountains, the gulf of St. Lawrence, etc. ; it's not so surprising when you remember that the Atlantic Ocean didn't even exist before about 60 million years ago, and for some time before that there was a supercontinent called "Euramerica", with what is now the UK right in the middle.

But enough geology... we continued on that day and stayed over in Fort Augustus, at the southwestern end of Loch Ness. No sign of Nessie, so we decided to take a chance and dangle our feet in the water... very cold!


We continued along the western coast of Loch Ness straight into Inverness, where we walked around a bit and had a peruse at two different kilt shops located there. It turns out that a custom-made kilt costs around 400 pounds if you're lucky, and you only save maybe 40 pounds buying just the fabric. There are some places that do a reduction in price for off-hire (former rentals) but it's still a big investment. We took down some numbers and prices, but didn't purchase anything at this time, and carried on through Inverness on our way to Culloden Moor.

Culloden is definitely a stop that you must make, should you travel through the highlands. The visitor's centre provides audioguides, should you wish to stand on the moor, see the memorial cairns and so on, but we opted instead to stay inside and do the indoor exhibit.


For those of you unaware of the significance of the Battle of Culloden, it was the last formal battle fought on British soil, and was the final confrontation of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. The objective of Charles Edward Stuart, or "Bonnie Prince Charlie" had been the overthrow of the reigning House of Hanover, and the restoration of his father and the House of Stuart to the British throne, and he had met with some success in prior engagements against the loyalist forces. It was not to be so on April 16th, 1746, however; when the smoke had cleared after the battle, which lasted perhaps an hour, the army led by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, loyal to the British government, had completely routed the Jacobite forces. Charles never mounted any further attempts to challenge Hanoverian power in Britain.


The aftermath of the battle brought many changes to Scotland, not least of which were the removal of hereditary justice rights for clan chiefs, and the stripping of lands from clan leaders who had supported the Jacobite cause. England moved strongly to incorporate Scotland within the rest of Britain, and aggressively targeted highland clan culture, prohibiting the wearing of tartans or kilts and requiring all swords to be surrendered to the government. This increasing control by England led to the continuing land seizure and relocation of highland families which became known as the clearances, and these resulted in great waves of Scottish emigration, that populated much of Canada in the 19th century.


By 1871 the Scottish population in the four original provinces of Canada reached 549,946; that's about one-sixth of the total Canadian population at the time.

We should count ourselves lucky that they came, too. Ever heard of John A. Macdonald, Simon Fraser, or William Lyon Mackenzie? Did you know that eight of the ten "Fathers of Confederation" were Scots? Did you know that Scots founded Dalhousie University, McGill University, the University of Toronto, Queen's University, St. Francis Xavier and the University of New Brunswick? Pretty good, eh? I guess Britain's loss was our gain...


Anyway, back to Culloden. The visitor's centre is a marvel, not only because of the many artifacts on display, but for the attempt to portray both sides of the conflict. One large hall has the Jacobite point of view displayed and illustrated on one wall, and the Hanoverian point of view on the other. We were all quite moved by the exhibits, and the boys had found a further connection with their shared heritage. They were proud to be named Malcolm and Duncan that day, but also were sobered by the sad story of the killing of so many highlanders in the battle, and the consequences for Scottish culture.


From there we continued on towards Kilravock, the castle that had been in the Rose family for many years, but is now used as a retreat centre. Notably Mary Queen of Scots, and Bonnie Prince Charlie were guests there. The castle was closed to the public, but we had a quick look round the gardens; there were some absolutely huge trees, including a layered beech tree that is probably around 325 years old.


We kept on, and had lunch at Cawdor Castle, while keeping a close watch for the murderous Thane himself...


We stopped off at the castle of MacPherson of Cluny, and then continued south, arriving at the Dalwhinnie distillery just after the last tour of the day. We had already done the Glenkinchie tour near Haddington, two summers ago, so we didn't feel too disappointed, especially because we were in time for a little whisky tasting, and we picked up a nice bottle of the limited edition Dalwhinnie, distilled in 1990. Yum. Perhaps it was all this highland ambiance, but Maggie has started to appreciate single malts in small quantities, especially the Tobermory that we had in Fort Augustus, so I am going to have fun trying out some of the sweeter malts from the back of our cabinet with her; normally these bottles are reserved for really special occasions, or when we have guests, but I am interested to see what she thinks of them and to see if my tastes have changed with time.

After Dalwhinnie we carried on to Garvald, and met our friends for dinner that evening. I have posted a few pictures of Garvald before, but want to re-emphasize what a nice little village it is, nestled into the hills by the banks of a river in East Lothian.


Duncan liked coming back for lots of reasons, not least because the next morning he found some fresh eggs! I wonder if I can fit a coop like that on the back terrace here? Hmmm....


It was nice to relax again and visit with our friends for what remained of the weekend; we were just in time for a community barbeque which was held on sunday afternoon. The sun cooperated and the thermometer crept up to 20 degrees, a welcome change, as it had been lurking in the low teens all week. Along with BBQ there were games and even bubbles, which everyone likes, especially Malcolm...