Brian Dickie

Quiet London Sunday

The White Horse, Parsons Green - 25 paces from my front door

My lovely little neighbourhood of Parsons Green started out the day bright and sunny - but I was locked inside processing my results from the last week of auditions in North America.  It is matter of getting all the scores into the computer database in Germany so that the correct messages can be sent to the competitors - by an automated process of course. Perish the thought that there would be much human intervention!

By the time I eventually emerged of course it had clouded over.  Maybe it will clear up, in which case I will go down to the river this evening.  It is a bare half mile away at Putney Bridge.  Otherwise I might just manage those 25 paces to the pub!

I have a full day tomorrow ending up at the Garrick where Tony Pappano (one of our members) is being interviewed by another of our many distinguished members Jim Naughtie.  That will be fun.

Back in London

There will probably not be much from me for the next 48 hours.  I am hoping for a quiet weekend to catch up and sort out.  But there is some fun stuff coming up from Monday until I go to Japan on Friday.

Have a great weekend everyone.

All done for North America

So I finished in Chicago this afternoon on schedule just before 4 pm and am now en route to London - actually at O'Hare waiting for my 7:05 pm flight.

There was a strong showing here in Chicago, of a uniformly high standard with the odd exception.......and just one stand out who will be invited immediately to the finals.  And there is a handful of really strong waitlisters.  Of course we have the age old problem of an abundance of great sopranos.  I am really trying to ration us to a maximum of fifteen of this variety out of the 40.  But in the end it is quality that counts. 

Chicago is looking pretty as I leave it this evening.  I was delighted to have lunch with David Holloway, about to retire from Roosevelt but staying on as director of the Santa Fe young artists program.  He has done a brilliant job there and I am sure he will continue to do so for a good while to come.  And Henry Fogel, dean of the CCPA dropped in at the end of my afternoon.  That was greatly appreciated.

So I have no idea when I will next be in Chicago.  Presumably anyway for Neue Stimmen in 2015 if they keep me on.  But I will try to get back each winter for a few days when the airfares are lower.  I do not like missing all the changes and improvements - it is still my city in a certain strong way!

I should be home in London by 10:30 tomorrow morning.  But only for a week.  I leave for China and Japan on May 3.

Chicago auditions

I am auditioning today in the lovely Sullivan Room of Roosevelt University.  It is a really excellent room for auditions - better I now discover than Ganz Hall which I have always used these last 13 years!

I started at 10:00 am will have heard seven candidates in the first hour.  Good going - but there are a lot to get through before 4pm when I leave for the airport.  I will give an update later - but for now you have above the first brave candidate who sang at 10. This is Louise Rogan, an English mezzo-soprano who was a member of the COT company last year.  The pianist is the excellent Stephen Hargreaves, another alum of COT whom I last saw in February in Toronto where he was playing the continuo in the Clemenza di Tito.  It's a small world.

A day in Chicago

Elephant and Castle

It has been something of a mixed emotion day - I realised how much I miss Chicago as I went about normal business.  This was my home for 13 happy years and it was really all good times...........and this evening we had a good get together of dear friends and colleagues including my first and last Board Presidents, Dorothy Osborn and Greg O'Leary, as well as current General Manager Jerry Tietz, former General Manager Roger Weitz (now in charge of the opera in Omaha, and Colleen Flanigan, longtime mistress of all things marketing and PR - and now moved to the Auditorium Theater in that capacity.

And I also paid a visit to the favourite watering hole - the Elephant and Castle - for lunch with the stalwart violone player Jerry Fuller.  And then this evening to the performance of Maria di Buenos Aires by COT at the Harris Theater.

It was good to be back in the Harris Theater where we had enjoyed so many successes.  This Astor Piazzolla piece is not really within my field of expertise.  But it is very much the kind of thing that my successor specialises in and with which he has had considerable success in Long Beach where he is also General Director. This production was conceived, designed, directed and conducted by him.

There was a beguiling performance from the singer of the title role, Peabody Southwell, supported strongly by the rest of the small cast.  And the participation of the Luna Negra dancers was a huge plus.  And there was a virtuoso exponent of the Bandonéon, Peter Soave, who rightly took a bow on the stage at the end.

Altogether this was an interesting curiosity, a departure from the work that COT has been known for in the past.  There was a good appreciative crowd.

I have my Neue Stimmen auditions all day tomorrow.  I will be walking through Millennium Park to Roosevelt University.  There is always something new going on there!  And I will make it to London tomorrow evening arriving Friday morning.

In Millennium Park April 24 2013

Some other parts of my brief Toronto day

St Lawrence Market, Front Street, Toronto 9:15 am April 23 2013

I walked from the Hilton Hotel on University Avenue a short kilometre to the COC's opera center this morning. I passed the lovely St Lawrence market as well as the apartment building that I lived in for my five years in Toronto 1998 -1993.  It is a strange feeling going back to places that have been so much part of my life.  And I did the same this evening returning to Chicago where I spent 13 wonderful years - but it has been only seven months since I left........

As already indicated it was a good day of auditions.  Chicago is on Thursday - it can hardly be better than today's.......we shall see.

The trip from Toronto to Chicago was a nightmare - American Airlines at its very considerable worst.  It is really not surprising that it is bankrupt.  But there it is - I am trapped as a premium passenger. 

Tomorrow I will be seeing old friends and colleagues - a welcome break.  And before the performance of COT's Maria di Buenos Aires tomorrow evening, my recent beloved board chairman, Greg O'Leary, is having a little dinner party at the University Club.  Just like old times.

And then there is a big day of auditions on Thursday before I leave for London that night.

A lovely day with old friends in Toronto

It is always such a pleasure to be back in Toronto. There are still a good many staff at the COC who were there when I left almost 20 years ago.  This is a company which is a real family which inspires loyalty.  It also happens to be arguably the best real "company" in North America. This is largely due to the work that Richard Bradshaw did in leading the "family" for 14 years.  And the spirit goes on with the current General Director Alexander Neef.

The extraordinary excellence of the Ensemble Studio provides a solid foundation.  And of course it was many of those singers who participated in the Neue Stimmen auditions today.  And I also heard a couple of outstanding first year members fuori concorso.  Just for information for the future.  And the standard is exceptional.

There were four certain Neue Stimmen finalists here plus a handful on the waiting list. I do not think that we can manage to take them all.  And actually some of them probably can not come to the finals in October anyway, because of commitments to the company.  So there is an embarrassment of riches here.  But I would remind my colleagues that this is a veritable goldmine.

I am sitting on the runway at Pearson Airport ready to take off.  I will write further on the flight and lagter this evening so check back here before midnight EST.

"We've never been through such a hectic day" (The Rake's Progress)

It has been somewhat frantic today but here I am at last in Toronto although it is 10:50 pm.........after a tiresome trip from New York where, in glorious sunny weather, the flight arrangements out of La Guardia were equivalent to those experienced after a snowstorm.  I was 90 minutes late into Toronto.  Inexplicable.

So New York is done.  And I believe that we have two finalists out of the 50 or so candidates.  That would be about par for the course I suppose - we are looking for 40 out of one thousand.  It is pretty tricky to make judgements so early on.  But I think that we have two candidates who match up extremely favorably to the expected high level.  They may not be in the ultimate final eight -  but on the other hand either could be an outright winner.  It is a lottery.  I am already beginning to feel the excitement!  Only 25 more days and 950  singers more to go!!

Tomorrow I have Toronto and on Thursday it is Chicago.

We're off!

French soprano Jessie Nguenang auditioning this morning with Jonathan Kelly at the piano

Today is the very first day of Neue Stimmen 2013 auditions.  And I am in the splendid new space built by Opera America in their premises at 330 7th Avenue here in New York. We have the wonderful Jonathan Kelly playing today and tomorrow.  He is at the Met and has for almost ten years been my pianist of choice when having auditions in New York.  It makes a huge difference having such an accomplished and authoritative head and pair of hands at the keyboard. It gives the singers the best possible chance - no excuses possible!

So I have heard this morning the first of what will be nearly 1,000 singers by the time I finish in August.  I have to choose 40! I may do another report later this evening.  The day is young...........

Maryland via Virginia

Wistaria in flower, Prospect and 35th 10:30 am April 20 2013

I went out to the University of Maryland at College Park, MD this morning.  To get there I wandered down from Georgetown to the Key Bridge, and over the Potomac to Rosslyn Metro station in Arlington.  It was a lovely morning and, as always when walking around Georgetown, there are such pretty little neighborhoods and, at the moment, glorious blossoms.

A comfortable trip on Washington's excellent subway system, the Metro, took me from Virginia accross to Maryland in 45 minutes. I then returned for an delicious lunch in Georgetown at the excellent Bistrot Lepic. Hightly recommended.  But please note that the apparently modestly priced wines come only in half bottles!

Georgetown from the Key Bridge 10:40 am April 20 2013

I am off to New York now - auditions start tomorrow!