Time at home

Death and Venice has opened to fantastic reviews and I am at home for a bit. My job sounds very glamorous - most of the time it is anything but, but this period in Toronto was as good as it gets. So though I'm really glad to be at home, there is a bit of sadness at leaving behind a happy and productive contract where my work was appreciated.

Now I'm home I shall be over at the other blog (see left) and shall try to be more disciplined than before at sharing what is going.

The excellent Radio 4 series 'A History of the world in 100 objects' has been keeping me entertained for months on the road. Here are all 100 in 5 minutes.

Farewell Toronto 2

iPhone + MacBook + long flight = another little film.

Farewell Toronto

Preparing to leave Toronto, a little sad.

Anyone who has read this from the beginning know that all the places I work get under my skin and I go through an 'I love it here, I could live here' phase. Well Canada has REALLY got under my skin.

This country has all the optimism, freshness and opportunity of the US, but with a healthy dose of European humour. There is a very broad ethnic mix and there don't seem to be the undercurrents of unrest and resentment that come with that mix elsewhere in the world. The Canadians are truly welcoming, liberal and pleasant.

Cultural stereotypes are a politically incorrect but the more I travel the more I realise they are grounded in fact. And that's wonderful. Well the Canadians are as happy, pleasant and laid back as the stereotype suggests.

Could I live here? The winter puts me off, but apart from that yes, in a heartbeat. I certainly hope to be returning to this wonderful, interesting country and particularly to this utterly wonderful company.

Niagara

Some of my movie clips from Niagara and the journey, finishing at Niagara-on-the-Lake - the shores of Lake Ontario. The music is by the fantastic Time for Three.

Niagara

To Niagara to see the famous Falls.

I came here 15 years ago and saw them in the depths of winter. Nothing was open, the Maid of the Mist boats were all beached up and the viewing platform was under 20 metres of ice. So to see it in sunshine and fine weather was great.

The Casinos and Hotels overlooking the Horseshoe Falls

The resort of Niagara offers the casual visitor many ways to part from their cash and proves that even the normally tasteful Canadians can be tacky, but it is a fun place.

However the main attraction, the Falls, don't disappoint. The scale is fantastic, particularly up close. It's a thrill to see that much water in motion.

The Falls throw up a cloud of water vapour which, when sunny, makes a permanent rainbow.

Then 12 kilometres up the road to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a beautiful little town full of colonial architecture from the mid 1800s. 

The main drag of the town is full of great shops, mostly one-offs, and it's a great place to spend a day.

The town is also home to the Shaw Festival, and my day was rounded off by a performance of Weil's One Touch of Venus at the gorgeous little Royal George Theatre.

Being a Geisha

Image by Kondo Atsushi

There is one side of this business which I have always found impossible - the schmoozing. It's just something I'm really bad at. Selling myself, selling my ideas, I'm always very uncomfortable having to do it. I can do the job, but not talk about it.

Unfortunately as a Director you can't audition and if you are trying to get funding for a project, you have to sell the idea. If you don't schmooze, you lose!

I went with Yoshi to a sponsors event at Canadian Opera Company before the orchestral rehearsal last night. COC do these things very well - a great dinner followed by an informal chat with Yoshi followed by watching the rehearsal. A good peek at the creative process for around 70 people all of whom give between $2500 and $50000 a year to the company.

As we were walking up to the function room Yoshi turned to me and said 'So, tonight I am Geisha.' He then proceeded to go around each and every table introducing himself and me and thanking the donors personally for helping us to bring this show to Toronto. He didn't try to be 'the artist', or try to be too deep. He simply set out to please. 

Everyone was, of course, charmed and delighted and immediately on our side. He was the perfect Geisha, and I'm sure everyone enjoyed the evening immensely and gained a unique insight into the production as a result.

It clicked with me. Performing allows one to put on a character and so gives you licence to  do the things you need to do on stage - to sell the show. Being oneself in order to sell an idea is really difficult unless you naturally have that bent. So from now on I shall become a Geisha in such situations - it's much easier to put yourself out there determining to please and fulfil those you are meeting. It's an image which is a real enabler.

Day off

Relaxing day walking through the Riverview and Little Greece areas East of the centre of Toronto. Lots of lovely cafes, bakeries and some fabulous whole food places.

The highlight was brunch at a fab organic pub! Brunch doesn't get much better than this - organic eggs benedict with prosciuto, sun dried tomatoes, and asiago cheese with fried potato and greens with raspberry dressing. Every bit as good as it sounds.


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Cultural night in Toronto

This afternoon was the opening of the COC season and it kicked off with Aida, directed by Brit Tim Albery.

Though famous for its stirring choruses, Grand March, and a couple of show stopping arias, it isn't Verdi's finest opera. The plot and characters are thin and the dramatic structure a little odd: the first half is full of crowd pleasing noise and spectacle and all the dramatic value is crammed rather intensively into the shorter second half.

This is rather like the operatic equivalent of having your pudding first, then having to go back to eat some worthy unbuttered vegetables.

However this production really made the second half work. This was in part to the updated setting - instead of Pharoaonic Egypt, a 20th century totalitarian regime - which though it didn't work entirely in the first half, did set up the characters well for the second.

To take a deserved share of the credit however were the excellent Aida of Sondra Radvanovsky and the Amonasro of Scott Hendricks. Both artists sang and acted with utter conviction and sold to me characters whom I have previously found uninteresting.

After the opera, to the streets of Toronto for the annual Nuit Blanche - an all night series of art events and installations all over the city. A great atmosphere on the streets and a lovely way to experience the city.



Click for my YouTube clip of Nuit Blanche

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Autumn taking hold

Autumn is well advanced here and the heating has gone on. However there's something wonderful about all the seasons being so virile here. The Summer is hot, the Winter freezing, the Spring suddenly bursts into life overnight, and the Autumn takes colour to a new level of understading.

There's something too about the air in North America that always strikes me. When it is blue it is a beautiful vibrant clear blue, and when the air is fresh it is super fresh.

Maybe it's the enduring optimism in North America that makes it seem so, or maybe it's the air, the colour, the massiveness of nature (even in the city) which causes the optimism. Whatever it is, I wish I could bottle it.

Toronto Beaches

Kew Balmy Beach, Toronto

A free day so, of course, it was rainy! However I walked right along Queen Street East to Kew and onto The Beaches. Lovely stretches of sand with a wide boardwalk and a great view back to Toronto centre.

Local Residents

Sitting on our roof terrace this evening, my housemate and I were joined by a local resident who, as bold as brass, wanted to help himself to our tea lights.

                                       

We sat not 2 yards way from him, both taking flash photos for about 20 minutes and the Racoon was completely unfazed and unaggressive.

A really amazing experience, though I expect our Toronto colleagues will berate us for not shooing him off - Racoons are a real pest here.

Autumn in Toronto

Changing leaves in Toronto - each day a different colour.

COC

I'm here in Toronto reviving 'Death in Venice' by Benjamin Britten. This production began in Aldeburgh three years ago and I've been with it through revivals in Bregenz, Prague, Lyon and now Toronto.

It's a simple and beautiful production of a complex but very rewarding piece. This time round we are lucky enough to have the conductor of the original 1973 production, Steuart Bedford, working with us (seen above rehearsing the wonderful Canadian Opera Company Chorus and Ensemble on the set in the Imperial Opera Rehearsal Theatre).

The company here in Toronto is excellent. Well run, well organised and well motivated. It's a joy working here.

We have been rehearsing hard getting the show ready for stage rehearsals which start next week, so there has been little time for sightseeing yet. Hopefully later.

Another full rehearsal this evening. It's exhausting running a big rehearsal, keeping everyone focussed and involved with all the information and encouragement they need. It is also very rewarding though.

The Four Seasons Centre, Canadian Opera Company's Home

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Eight hours with my MacBook

The perfect evening. It may only be an eight-hour old relationship, but already I know it's for life!


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First free day in Toronto!

We've been having lovely crisp, clear Autumn days since I arrived so I was looking forward to today, my first free day, to get out into the sunshine and explore. However, torrential rain greeted me this morning.

But that does bring me to the second thing that we love about North America.....the many and wonderful opportunities for retail therapy!

The rest of the day has been spent in blissful silence, admiring my new macBook!

Back Blogging

Well, an obscene amount of time since I last blogged. Partly the lack of broadband in my apartment in Bregenz, and partly getting out of the habit.

Anyway, I'm back and determined to blog my way through my time in Toronto. Hurrah for strong broadband at the lovely house I'm staying in, and for the iPhone app which is making it possible.

I'll leave you for now with the first of many reasons why we LOVE North America.....


....the breakfasts!


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RELUCTANT BLOGGER 26: Much to agree with

I can't help agreeing with much in this article by opera critic Robert Thicknesse. When we are in the rehearsal room, I always imagine we are preparing a performance for people like us - and despite the occasional diva strop or difficult colleague, most people involved in the coalface of opera are pretty normal folk - but come the performances I always feel very uncomfortable surrounded by an audience from a very different world. Something has to change, but I don't know how.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 25: New Blog

I've started the new off-the-road blog. That's where you'll find me until June 8th when I go back on the road. It's called ...and when the music stops...  and you'll find it here.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 24: Review

So Idomeneo opened 10 days ago. The final stages of getting the show ready for the public were not entirely without problems so it was a bitter-sweet experience for all of us on the production team. We were not quite able to realise the standard of technical proficiency we were aiming for. Not that the lovely people at the Estates Theatre were unwilling or unable, just that there is a cultural difference which seemed to make consistency and responsibility for these elements of the production difficult to achieve. The public reaction was very good at the premier though and the management happy with it. the show did look very beautiful and all performances were strong, especially those of Charles Workman (Idomeneo) and Hannah-Esther Minutillo (Idamante) who in performance  found new psychological depths to the troubled father/son relationship.

I was very glad to get home and have been thoroughly enjoying being back in York. It's funny though, this blog is something of a lifeline when I am away and has been a very good exercise for me. However it feels like a work place - a place for part of me but not all of me. It doesn't seem the right place to talk about what I am doing when at home, although I want to share that too.

So I think I am going to start another tandem blog - a sort of 'home space'. here I will write about life in York, our allotment, how a freelancer gets his head around life when not working. Whether that will be interesting for you I don't know, but I think it will be another good exercise for me and will fill in the gaps.

So watch this space....for news of another space!

Goslings down by the River Ouse, York

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 23: Camel speed

I heard an old Arab saying on the radio the other day which said that the soul travels only at the speed of a camel. It started me thinking about the experience of travelling for a living.

I've been lucky enough to travel a lot, but I'm an amateur compared to some. Ibn Battuta travelled over 75,000 miles in the mid 14^th century, seeing Africa, India, the Middle and Far East, China, the Mediterranean, having vivid adventures in each place. He finally returned home to Tangier after 28 years of travel, all presumably at the speed of a camel or slower, and documented his adventures. It is a great read.

The idea of always moving onward, staying in each new location only as long as is safe or desirable is very seductive. We all know that travel is no escape from your problems – they either sit on your shoulder becoming heavier as the journey goes on, or fester dangerously back at home waiting for your return. But to give over your life totally to travel and, at Ibn's time particularly, to the utterly unknown is an incredible and seductive idea.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with travel. I NEVER want to leave home before a trip but always enjoy the experience when it's happening. Sometimes I am even reluctant to come home because the truth is that whilst you are away you lead a different life - you become in part a different person. That can be difficult to leave. It can be even more difficult to recognise your old self returning as you walk up the path to home. It takes a couple of days for your 'normal' life to feel like a welcome and comfy pair of familiar slippers.

I can understand the Arab saying. When you first arrive somewhere new it is exciting, interesting, sometimes disappointing, always a challenge. But it is a slightly hollow experience until you have adjusted to the different pace, stopped seeing the people as foreigners with confusing ways and recognised your common humanity, found your shops and routine, – until your soul has caught up with you.

I feel that my soul has caught up with me finally in Prague. It didn't make it this far when I was here last year! Don't get me wrong, I am LONGING to go home to York, but I feel relaxed here finally. I'm even finding myself naturally picking up a few odd words of Czech to add to my fluent 'Good morning. I'd like a coffee please.'

Why does that only ever seem to happen towards the end of a trip? Did Ibn Battuta and other great explorers manage to speed up this process and so enjoy the destination more? The saying would suggest not.

A very big part of me wastes far too much time dreaming of the day when we can stay at home, devote ourselves to a garden, chickens, cat and dog, and be totally fulfilled by that. The truth is though that at the moment I am still seduced by the never-ending onward road ahead and, even though much of my job frustrates me severely, travel is the one great perk.

Ibn stopped travelling at 51 and lived another 23 years in Tangier. Maybe I've got a few more years of travel ahead of me......but the whispering cluck of chickens is getting ever louder in my ear!

but the book on Amazon

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 22: Idomeneo Final Rehearsals

We're in the final stage of rehearsals here in Prague for Idomeneo.

The theatre we are performing in, the Estates Theatre, was where Mozart gave the first performances of Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito. It features in the film Amadeus. It's a perfect little theatre, with balcony stacked upon balcony, giving it a very intimate but exciting atmosphere as an audience member.

A plaque on the floor of the orchestra pit commemorates the spot where Mozart conducted from the fortepiano.

(I don't know why it's upside down!)

In the UK, a cast will rehearse for 4 or 5 weeks in a dedicated rehearsal room with a mock-up of the set before moving onto stage for an intensive week of rehearsals putting together costumes, set, lighting and action with piano, then with orchestra. The process has a good momentum leading up to a Dress Rehearsal and Opening Night. This will be repeated 3 to 5 times over a season, building up a small repertoire of pieces on offer.

Opera Companies here still operate a repertory system, putting on a different show every night drawn from a much larger repertoire. Add to this the fact that the spaces are shared between opera, ballet and drama, and the scheduling becomes a nightmare.

We have been rehearsing Idomeneo in 5 different rehearsal spaces including the stage, but with little or no suggestion of the set. The rehearsals on stage feel very much like one of those 1930's films where everyone is on stage doing different things whilst technicians bang and crash in the background. Ok, it's not quite that bad here, but it certainly isn't a focussed rehearsal space.

Last week we had two days to rehearse with set, costumes and lighting with piano. It went pretty well considering the short amount of time but we encountered a very different way of working. We are used to continue the creation process in these rehearsals, with lighting and technical cues remaining fluid as we experiment to see what works best. Often happy accidents occur which really lift the production into something living.

Here they are used to everything being decided and fixed before this stage and to it not changing. So there has been some resistance to trying alternatives.

Next week we have the orchestral rehearsals but without any set, costumes or lighting. These rehearsals strictly belong to the conductor as they are about concentrating on balance, pacing and communication between him and the singers. This leaves Yoshi and I twiddling our thumbs a little, maybe giving the odd note. Frustrating as, for us, the momentum drops.

We pick up again next Friday with everything and have 2 pre-Dress Rehearsals leading to a public Dress Rehearsal. Until then, more sight-seeing!

Yoshi taking a picture of the poster outside the Estates Theatre.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 21: Obit

The online magazine Obit is really fascinating and not simply and morbidly about death. But the article below is an interesting account of death Italian style.
http://www.obit-mag.com/articles/death-italian-style

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 20: Addendum

A few more clips of the lovely River Vltava.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 20: Roses and Bears

So, Cesky Krumlov – a 200km bus ride South towards the border with Austria, in a very smart coach with films and free drinks. All for under £5! I can heartily recommend the Student Agency who run these busses (not just for students) and arrange flights and other travel options too. Find them here.

The frugality continued – unusually for me – at Krumlov House, a hostel run by an American and Canadian who, like many others in CK, came for a week and stayed the rest of their lives. They've created a really great place with a lovely atmosphere. I had a good room for about £25 a night. Their story can be read here.

Cesky Krumlov is a arrestingly beautiful medieval town with the river Vltava snaking through it. It has survived almost intact probably because of neglect. I saw pictures of the place in the 60's and it was in a mess BUT hadn't been messed around with by town planners. Now sensitively and steadily renovated, it is a tourist Disneyland of medieval wonder. However, it has a slightly hippy air (appropriately enough for Bohemia) which makes it very relaxed and unique. I sense this influence is slowly decreasing, but for the moment many of the shops, restaurants and hotels have a gloriously home-made edge and a refreshing lack of concern for conformity or regulation.

The river, and Smetena's music describing it, are hard-wired into the Czech culture. The piece plays every time a Czech Airlines flight lands, the final chords of the piece form the jingle for Railway announcements, and the music is played at national occasions. I couldn't get it out of my head the whole time I was in CK.

The imposing Cesky Krumlov Castle and Chateau with its riotous tower looms over the city. There are real bears living in the moat! When you go into the castle you see where they end up after their guarding duties are over as their skins lie on every floor. Along with the red rose, the bear is a symbol of Krumlov Castle.

The romantic Bear enclosure in the moat

...and one of its inhabitants.

I took a tour of the lovely 16^th and 17^th century rooms led by the appropriately named and equipped Rosa, a completely barking-mad Czech woman who, I suspect, has a long and interesting past in amateur dramatics (we even got a song at the end of the tour) and who must have learnt her English from the 'Comparethemeerkat.com' commercials. She was wonderful. I'd happily let her show me the whole country.

The castle has an amazing Baroque Theatre inside but, sadly for me, this was closed.

The Baroque Theatre, (from the Castle's website).

I picked up an artistic thread that I first found in Vienna, visiting the Egon Schiele Museum. The artist's mother was from Krumlov, and he lived here for a number of years at the beginning of his career until the people of the town forced him to leave because of their perception of his artistic activities.

A colourful row of buildings with the castle in the background.

The rest of my time was spent walking the small but beautiful maze of streets, eating in the great Laibon Vegeterian Restaurant down by the river, the authentically medieval Two Marys next door, where I enjoyed (yes really) Buckwheat Gruel, and the Traveller's Hostel with its dungeon-like dining room complete with roaring fire.

Buckwheat gruel and local red wine - better than it looks!

I could happily have stayed in Cesky Krumlov for several days more. It's somewhere I shall be revisiting for sure.

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 19: Cesky Krumlov

Hello from beautiful Cesky Krumlov in Southern Bohemia. I'll write in more length later, but for now here are some of my pictures and a bit of video - misspent time fiddling with my phone cameras and computer. the soundtrack is Smetena's 'Vltava' written about the river which snakes it's way through Krumlov. The sound starts off very quiet so turn up your speakers. Enjoy!

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 18: Spring Market in Prague

Just some photos of the Spring Market in Prague Old Town Square this weekend

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 17: Budapest

Easter in Budapest

A little adventure – heading further East by sleeper train.

Airports always make you forget who you really are and encourage you to feel glamorous for a few hours. The goods on sale, the environment, everything about the experience tells you 'you're special, leading this jet-set life-style – what an exciting life you have'. Of course the truth is that you can't afford any of the shiny things on offer and will spend an hour and a half queuing to get through the x-ray machine. They do a very good job of helping you forget this but airports are essentially a sterile environment.

Coach stations always have the opposite effect – you feel the lowest of the low. Coaches always seem to leave at inhumanely early or late hours. People are vulnerable and defensive at coach stations, and the environment is somehow hostile. Certainly not glamorous.

Train stations however are to me the most alluring of places. Though major train stations are often run down, in bad parts of town, and busy, shuffling places, there is something incredibly exciting about the possibilities offered by that huge Departures board. This is especially true on the Continent where the destinations offered include far flung corners of Europe and beyond.

In England we are used to trains going as far as Scotland or Cornwall, but to stand in Paris and see in front of you the opportunity to hop on a train for Berlin, Naples, Istanbul, Moscow.........it feels like a real adventure could begin. Perhaps it's that knowledge that you could just pick your destination and run away.

Hlavni Nadrazi Station buffet

Friday night I took the sleeper train from Prague's crumbling Art Nouveau Hlavni Nadrazi station to Budapest, a journey of 9 hours. I've never taken a sleeper train before. They always seem extra glamorous – something of a James Bond film, escaping across the border about them.

Modern sleepers are a masterpiece of space and design. Three people stacked in a space just over six foot long, less than four foot wide and eight or nine feet high. Sounds like hell, but the design is so good it is pretty comfortable.

The third berth is on a shelf out of sight above

I shared my cabin with two young lads from Mexico over inter-railing on the Continent for a month. It wasn't the best night's sleep of my life – you tend to wake up every time the train stops – but I've had much worse. It was certainly an easy way to eat up the miles and arrive in Budapest in time for breakfast.

Having seen Prague and Vienna, I was very keen to take up the opportunity to visit Jeff on tour again and see the third city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I was also keen to see the Art-Nouveau architecture for which the city is so famous.

Arriving in Budapest you are aware that you have certainly travelled East and that the lingering influence of the former Communist regime is stronger even than in the grey parts of Prague. The city is quite run down in many places and redevelopment spreading only very slowly.

There were not quite the number or quality of Art Nouveau buildings that I had hoped for - though some beautiful examples certainly - but it is a city with some good buildings generally and the wide straight boulevards lined by huge classical edifices remind one of many Italian cities.

One thing is sure - whilst budding architects in the West were playing with building bricks made up of squares, rectangles and circles, the Magyars had their hands in a whole different toy box. Parallelograms abound and all sorts of strange un-classical shapes are thrown into the mix.

The Gresham Insurance Building

 
The main sight of Budapest is 'that view' looking over the Danube to the magical Parliament Building, and it certainly is wonderful.

A view from the castle over to the Parliament.

The 'Blue Danube' is actually quite green up close.

The area around the castle in Buda is older than the rest of the city and reminds me of the similar spot in Prague. It is much less tourist oriented than Prague which was refreshing.

Elderly busker playing his inventively supported zither

It was Easter weekend when I was there and there was a jolly Spring Market in the centre of town, with folk music and really lovely craft stalls. Also good fast food. I eyed up this interesting looking stew...

...then saw it's main ingredient.....

........and settled instead upon fried potatoes and onions and a huge solid sausage red with paprika. Really delicious.

On Easter Sunday I became an opera tourist and went to a morning performance of Kodaly's The Spinning Room – a piece I had never heard of. The opera, based on Transylvanian Folklore, was largely en excuse for lots of happy dancing peasants in matching costume but with a bit of dramatic misery thrown in. A very old-fashioned production, it was nonetheless rather wonderful and performed with love and conviction. I enjoyed it much more than many of the productions I have seen in Central Europe which have tried to be more contemporary.

The Opera House is beautiful inside - ok many are, but this one is perfect in scale and grand without being overwhelming. One of the nicest theatres I have ever been in.

I paid about a pound for my ticket in an Upper Circle Box, which I shared with a lovely old Hungarian couple and with whom I communicated with lots of smiles and broken German (theirs as broken as mine).

An unexpected pleasure was discovering the Tutankhamen exhibition in Budapest. I had missed it in London yet have found the images of the boy king's treasures totally absorbing since spending many hours as a small child in the early 70's pouring over the catalogue from the first London exhibition.

The exhibition in Budapest was in a set of vaulted labyrinthine cellars which added to the magic. I couldn't believe how close one could get to all the main treasures. Only small objects were behind glass, and the rest were right there in easy reach. Really stunning.

The outer and middle coffins

The solid gold inner coffin

So a brief two-day visit to an interesting city, but one which has an air of sadness.