Gorgeous sunny day

It is the first really nice day in a while, with clear blue skies and temperatures getting ready to pop into the double digits.

The neighbours have been grumbling about the "long, cold winter" that we have been experiencing, but to Canadians it has been quite a good winter.  We really have appreciated the snow that stayed on the ground for much of the time, as it helped liven up the very grey winter days that can drag one's spirits down so strongly.  Maggie rather happily informed me that she was driving every day this week, so I would imagine there will be some convertible time in her future this week!  March is usually a beautiful month here, and I anticipate that with a full week of warmth we will see flowering trees very shortly.

It has been a very busy time musically for me recently.  I spent some time last week continuing to work on the Bach St. Matthew, but also to listen and sing through the Puccini Messa di Gloria which has its first rehearsal tomorrow evening.  It's really very beautiful music but much easier to learn that these "peak" Bach recitatives and arias from the St. Matthew... Peter let me in on a secret; the tenor-baritone duet that completes the Mass was re-used by Puccini in its entirety in Manon Lescault.  Recycling at its finest!

Saturday I went over to Matthias and Karin's place to help them hang lamps in the bathrooms, living room and hallway, and to help move some very heavy things upstairs in the attic.  This is their first house purchase and the first move in at least ten years, so they still have lots of unpacking to do.  It was nice to do some electrical work; it reminded me a little bit of my Bell Canada installer days, fifteen years ago now, and I was glad to give them a hand.  In the evening I went to see the Brussels Choral Society present the Beethoven 3rd Symphony and the Mass in C in the BOZAR concert hall.  I am happy to be singing the Duruflé Requiem with this group later on in June, but also was glad to get a feel for the "house" myself.  I have two performances in the BOZAR this year: Carmina Burana in May and Don Giovanni in October, so I was listening to how the solo voices carry with great interest.  I found the whole performance really very enjoyable with lots of clear and sensitive singing from the choir and the soloists, and I enjoyed the orchestra very much, conducted by Bartholomeus-Henri Van de Velde.

Sunday I went for the second fitting of the grey double-breasted waistcoat that Bert Menzel is making for me.  He is a very talented artist and tailor, and is happy to collaborate with me on this design; at the moment we are examining button options; I have some vintage hexagonal blue mother-of-pearl ones but there are a little too big, and my round white mother-of-pearl ones are a little bright.  I am currently on a quest for some smaller blue/white or blue/grey ones.  It will likely be ready by the end of the month, and he is also making some small alterations to the tailcoat and the striped trousers.  Pictures to follow I am sure!  Here's Hugh Laurie (from Jeeves and Wooster) in a grey flannel one, with Stephen Fry.

But mine will likely end up a bit more like this one, except in dove grey instead of black:

Notice the white slip, which gives the impression of an added waistcoat underneath.  In fact this is a removable strip that is buttoned to the inside of the waistcoat, but it pays homage to the restoration-era habit of wearing multiple waistcoats of contrasting colours.

After my fitting, I met with Peter, and as the générale for La Dispute (the new opera at La Monnaie) was delayed by an hour for some technical reasons, we decided to go do some coaching, and worked our way through the Puccini together, and sang a bit of Bach for fun, before heading back to the opera.

La Dispute is a remarkable work, with great singing, magical staging (as usual) from Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann and a bang-up performance from the always excellent orchestra of La Monnaie under Patrick Davin's baton. Benoit Mernier has written a very challenging score; it's something that I need to hear more than once to really get my head around, but the colours he presents are really something to hear... it was nice to see many familiar faces from the La Monnaie planning team as well.

Speaking of planning, Maggie and I are doing some around our travel activities for the next few months.  We are looking forward to the visit of my parents in about a month, and will most likely take advantage of their side trip with the children to take a little trip of our own, perhaps to Paris or maybe Champagne for a couple of nights.  As well we have got out the atlas and are thinking about our route down to Croatia in July; we have an eastern and a western route to consider.  The eastern one is slightly shorter, about 1700 kms, or 17 hours at a straight shot to Postira, but we plan to break that up into three sections, stopping perhaps in Frankfurt, Nurnberg or Munich, then in Austria, Trieste or upper Croatia... then again, we are planning to take this route back, and will spend some time with our friends the Kerchbaums in Graz, so the other option is to take the western route, which is only a few kilometers longer but passes through Switzerland en route to Milan, and then Venice and from there to Croatia.  I should think that the roads through the mountains there are not terrible to drive in summer?  Our friends Bryan and Kiana go frequently to Lugano, so as that is on this route, perhaps I will ask their advice.  It's a nice problem to have!

Today I am going to continue my work with Bach and Puccini, and try to get outside for a long walk in the sunshine.  I wish you a pleasant week!

Bruges visit, new car, prehistory

 

Maggie is at work, and the boys are at school, and so for the first time in many days, I am a) alone in the house and b) without pressing business outside of it.  I have made myself a big list of things to do, but thought I would also write a bit about the end of our Carnaval holiday week.

Brussels is lucky to have a great many museums, but one that I had not previously visited is the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.  It's a fifteen minute bus trip from our house and then a five minute walk, but unlike Maggie and the boys I had never had the opportunity to go there.  It houses the largest collection of Iguanodon fossils in the world, found in the late 19th century in a coal mine near Bernissart.  

If you've read anything about the history of paleontology you may remember that Iguanodon was a very famous dinosaur (the second one named and one of the three original genera that defined Dinosauria) and was at the centre of a very publicized and acrimonious debate between Gideon Mantel and Sir Richard Owen.  It's also the dinosaur with the thumb spike that was initially thought to be a horn... that makes it a perfect illustration of how the scientific method works to gradually form our models of the world, and is open to re-writing them based on new evidence.  It's a fabulous dinosaur gallery, in my opinion just as nicely arranged as in London's Natural History Museum.  As well as the dinosaur gallery there are numerous other galleries, and the museum is of a size that is manageable, so one doesn't get tired of walking, and unlike some museums (the confusing and impractical Libeskind designs of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto come to mind) it's well organized so that one never feels lost.

There is a large space on the main floor for travelling expositions, and that is what chiefly convinced us to visit when we did.  The museum of Prehistory in Flémalle near Liège is undergoing renovations and so the exhibits, the animateurs and their activity sessions are visiting Brussels until the end of May.

 

If you spent any time with us in our former Brussels house in 2007/2008, you'll know that Malcolm was absolutely crazy for flint-knapping, the manufacture of bows and arrows, and things of that nature, spending many hours outside in the garden whittling things and enjoying his tree house, so it was natural that he would be interested.

 

Duncan found it very interesting as well, and all four of us attended participatory demonstrations on how to use spear throwers, rope-making and hide preparation, and even fire-making with flint and iron pyrite.  Very cool!  I had no idea that ground-up shelf mushroom worked so well as a tinder, and the while we had partial success with our sparks the animatrice was obviously an expert.  Perhaps we will send one or both boys on a stage in the Ardennes préhistorique this summertime so that they can practice?

 

After the museum visit we went to meet our friend Olga and her friend Andrea, who had spent most of their holidays in Spain, but had included a two-night stopover in Brussels on their way back to Toronto.  Most of the photographs of our time together are still in our visitors' cameras, but we did manage to snap a few ourselves, including this one taken at the famous café La Mort Subite, behind the opera.  The cherry beer was a big hit!

The next day we got up early and headed for Bruges by train, taking a lovely canal tour by boat, eating cornets of frites, climbing the Belfry tower (the boys counted the steps on the way up and the way down just to verify that 366 is an accurate number) and sitting in the square across from the Belfroi (inside by the fire of course) and drinking a Kwak beer in its special glass, before walking back and catching the train home.

That evening we all warmed up by drinking champagne and eating raclette with pickles, before walking Olga and Andrea to the Metro, and wishing them a safe journey home to Toronto.  We all love having visitors from Canada, and make sure to devote our time and experience to showing them around.  Thanks to Olga and Andrea for visiting; we hope you had fun!

Yesterday was the culmination of a long and surprisingly arduous process of getting our new car.  I've written before about how it seems that nothing can ever get done in Belgium with one visit, but that was true in this case.  We decided to trade in our car on a newer one, and so spent the better part of a day last week in the bank, then at the dealership, then at the bank again.  Then we waited two days for our new license plate to arrive, as all new plates must adhere to the new european standard of seven digits (single number-three letters-three numbers), and the person at the bank assured us that the plate was ordered.  On Friday the car was to be ready to be picked up, but there was a problem with the computer interface between the bank and the licensing bureau, so the demand for the plate had not in fact happened yet.  This meant that we had to go back to the bank, and get a pink paper with three different rubber stamps on it from different people, then take it to the license office downtown in person.  After a two hour wait we were informed that the license plate would arrive - not then and there, as happened last time we ordered a plate, but after two days' wait, on Monday!  Monday morning it arrived by post, but the postman needed 30 euros, so I had to run to the bank... and wait for him to finish a delivery and return.

Finally all was ready, and I went to the dealership, handed in our old Polo, and eased into the cockpit (I know it's just a seat but "cockpit" sounds cooler) of our new Golf Cabriolet turbo diesel, and drove out to Waterloo to pick up Maggie.  Cue the Ferris Bueller soundtrack!

They say that hunger is the best sauce, and the anticipation, plus a sunny 8 degree day made it a natural that we would put the top down.  With the heater on and Booker T and the MGs on the stereo, we were quite comfortable in "Schnelli" for our ride back into Brussels, and are looking forward to many more road trips in the near future.  When you're in a country where it rains much of the time it's important to profiter du soleil when you may...

Congé de Carnaval

These past couple have weeks have marked a welcome resumption of my rehearsal activities after some down time in January... I began coaching the St. Matthew Passion with Peter Tomek earlier this month, but Peter left Brussels late last week and will be away until the end of the month.  Over the last ten days or so I have been lucky to have four afternoon sessions with Bart Van Reyn in Antwerp, and we worked our way through the Bach, which is tremendously exciting music to sing; he will conduct me in my first performance of the work on March 22nd.  For those interested the ensemble did some professional video recordings of the Passion two years ago, and a number of the same soloists will return this coming year.  You can see those recordings here.

Yesterday we also took a look at the Don Giovanni score together, singing through the Commendatore part, and some of Masetto, and we think it's going to work out fine for our five performances in October, including one at the BOZAR.  Yesterday was nice also, in that Maggie and the boys - off school for a week's holidays - shared the 35 minute drive to Antwerp yesterday.  While I was in rehearsal they went our for pizza and then to the Plantin - Moretus printing museum and manuscript archive, a UNESCO world heritage site.  I was sorry to have missed it!  It has the two oldest printing presses in the world, a gutenberg bible, the studio where Rubens worked, and other interesting displays.  The printing company was founded around 1550 by Christophe Plantin, and after his death it was owned by his son-in-law Jan Moretus.  I hope to take a couple of free hours next time I am in Antwerp to go have a look through the museum myself.

In other musical activities I was happy to receive the Duruflé Requiem score, and am looking forward to the Brussels Choral Society performance in June with conductor Eric Delson.  The Duruflé is scored much like the more familiar Fauré Requiem, and the tessitura of the baritone solo is right in the sweet spot, so that should be a lot of fun.  It's a nice modestly-sized part to make my debut with the Choral Society here, so that's also fortunate for me.

What else?  We decided on replacing our car, and will pick up the new one tomorrow (you'll have to wait for details and pictures).  This meant that we have spent pretty much an entire day this week in the bank and the car dealership, calculating the financing.  Even more time consuming has been the decisions about insurance: the packages in Belgium are a little mystifying at first, with interesting names... the basic third party liability insurance is mandatory, and that is all we had for our first car, as it was several years old and cheap to replace.  This car is newer and more expensive so we wanted to add accident, theft, fire, glass coverage etc.  The names are also interesting: "Mini-Omnium" covers everything but accidents that are you fault, "Omnium" covers everything, and Maggie and I found ourselves speculating that a third category should exist, called "Om-nom-nom" that covers theft by the Cookie Monster.... They should have opted into this insurance package in Hannover...

St. Valentine's Day is not at all a big thing here in Belgium, probably because it very frequently falls during the Congé de Carnaval.  A very few shops - the perfume, clothing and chocolate shops do decorated windows but it is a much smaller deal.  However we will have something nice tonight no doubt.  The schoolchildren don't give each other Valentines here, but the boys received cards in the mail from my parents, so that's nice for them.  Perhaps some chocolates will appear, who knows?  Honestly the Belgians give each other chocolates and flowers all year 'round anyway.

Saturday we will welcome our friend Olga from Toronto to Brussels, as she and her friend will be stopping over for two nights.  We plan to visit Bruges at the very least, possibly an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, and maybe some other museums or exhibitions.  Who knows, we might simply do a chocolatier "crawl" and let them decide for themselves which chocolate they like best...

Happy Valentine's Day!