Brian Dickie

Whatever happens to all those productions?

People often wonder what afterlife our productions have.  Well the answer regrettably is "not much".  But we do keep them for a modest time before making space for new things.  But it is not long - and yesterday we disposed of that beautiful production of Abduction from last season which was just taking up too much space in our modest "warehouse".  Felicity Jackson is now responsible for the efficient management of this.  And here are her "helpers" - those of you who saw the production will recognize the dolls.  And here you see the guys who took them away.........click to enlarge!

This afternoon we came to the end of the Fall audition season with an afternoon at Northwestern.  Once again this year they showed up very strongly - and two sopranos had had other lives of success, one as Miss Memphis and another as Miss Clinton County (Iowa)!  And as well as being beautiful and intelligent they sang terrifically well and if we can get them in to the company this year we will be very fortunate.  So kudos to Northwestern for covering all the bases.

Tomorrow we have an event at the Cultural Center at 6.00pm.  Please try to be there and introduce yourselves - there is a social hour or so after the boring stuff at the beginning.

More about Adams

There is a beautifully written review of A Flowering Tree by Alex Ross in the New Yorker (dated December 4) that arrived in the mail today.  And a splendid interview of Adams by Pamela Rosenberg on the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's website.  Both require your attention.  Pamela is of course the commissioner of John Adams' previous opera Dr Atomic when she was General Director of the San Francisco Opera.  She now runs the Berlin Phil.  Good for her, and good job interviewing as well! 

post holiday blues

This was a long working day by off season standards - that is to say more than 12 hours door to door.  Starting with a breakfast meeting with a dear and important colleague at the excellent Peninsula Hotel - not quite up to the standard of its parent (or grand parent) the Peninsula in Hong Kong where I spent my first night in Asia in 1980 - but a very good Chicago hotel without doubt.  Then to the office for a review of all that had happened over the long holiday weekend (not much) - and on to a valuable meeting with our partners at the Harris Theater - the management and board of this excellent theater.  Whilst I can not say that we depend on each other, I can say that we depend on them for ensuring the downtown presence of COT in Chicago.  And I think that our solidarity in supporting excellence here was affirmed. 

And quite consistent with all that was having our November board meeting at the end of the day.  We have some energetic new board members and an enthusiastic and extremely capable development department.  The future is bright and I am greatly encouraged.  But there is much to be done nevertheless.  You may be the first to know how we progress over the coming months.

Meanwhile Chicago continues to build.  It is some time since I gave you a progress report on the Trump construction.  But here it is above!

Hey diddle diddle......

Its holiday time and they switched the lights on at the Zoo in Lincoln Park this evening.  And in addition to the moon in the nursery rhyme there was the real actual one!

And if further evidence of the presence of the Christmas spirit is required there are also the tableaux vivants in the lion house, of which a splendid example is to be see here below!

We are in for a fun filled next six weeks, my favorite time of the year.  I am happy to be in Chicago for this - nowhere is it better!

Yes, I did get back to Chicago!

I spent a half day in London on Sunday - notable for an excellent dinner with Jan Latham Koenig who kindly invited Nicola Raab and me to join him at home in South Kensington.  For those of you who dont know - Jan is conducting  and Nicola is directing Beatrice and Benedict, the last production of our 2007 season.  They will be an excellent team - each bringing appropriate seriousness to their approach to this delicious work of Berlioz's benign maturity. 

Monday was a long travel day, and yesterday a chance to catch up with stufff that had built up during my 10 day absence from the office.  And today there was time to breathe!  And also to have lunch at Pucks in the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago with one of the many visitors to Chicago from Europe who pop in on a regular basis.  This city is a wonderful meeting place for people from far and wide.

Before returning to the office I visited briefly Bruce Mau's current exhibition at the MCA - Massive Change: The Future of Global Design.  I knew Bruce as a wonderful graphic designer in Toronto 17 years ago.  He has now gone far beyond that and I must confess to have found the whole grandiose effect of this show rather unsettling in the last analysis.  Lots of magnificent statements like “We will eradicate poverty” and “We will eliminate the need for raw material and banish all waste” - all good stuff in theory but don't hold your breath in our present challenged world.  Maybe it was just post-prandial depression......!  Anyway go and see it for yourself if you are here in Chicago.  And if you are in Toronto or Vancouver maybe you saw it already.

We now have the Thanksgiving holiday so there may be a further period of silence from me.  

Abschlusskonzert

Yesterday evening's concert was a great event - and a major social occasion in this quiet small town in Westphalia.  But the music and the singing was the main thing and the audience were rightly delighted.  The show stopper was a young Australian, Jessica Pratt, whose completely absorbed and vocally gleaming performance of a Strauss song Befreit was followed by a breathtaking aria from Rossini's Matilde di Shabran which she dispatched with complete disdain for its technical difficulties.  Wonderful!  I had heard her in Sydney last year and nominated her for the final rounds in Guetersloh.  As so often happens in competitions she did not do herself justice so was overlooked - but did enough to be invited to participate this last week and covered herself with glory. 

But there were others too - not least, and of interest to COT fans, Jurgita Adamonyte, a Lithuanian mezzo who will sing Ursule in our Beatrice and Benedict in May 2007.  The program was brilliantly put together and presided over by Gustave Kuhn - altogether an exemplary way of communicating the talents of these singers and the value in supporting them to an audience of potential donors!

I must sign off now to get some breakfast and then find my way to the train which will take me to Duesseldorf for my flight to London.

Masterclass

The Bertelsmann Foundation's work for young singers is well known through the Neue Stimmen biennial competition.  Less is known about the Masterclasses held in the "off years" of which 2006 is one.  I am here for the Abschlusskonzert this evening.  I was present at the final run through this morning and there are a few pictures of that in the album which you see on the left and which can also be reached here.  The Foundation's offices, where the Masterclasses take place, are pictured above.

The Masterclasses are led by the conductor Gustave Kuhn, and this year additional "Masters" have been Katia Ricciarelli, Ute Trekel-Burckhardt, Francisco Araiza, and Siegfried Jerusalem.  There are 12 singers in the program from nine different countries and six continents (if you count Australasia separately).  And there are four first class coaches - the whole program excellently managed by Bertelsmann's Katrin Mann.

The concert is this evening at 7 followed no doubt by much partying.  I am off to London tomorrow for a meeting with Jan Latham Koenig and Nicola Raab, our Beatrice and Benedict team - then home to Chicago on Monday.

On the way out........

I am now in Guetersloh but on the way here this morning, as I walked to the subway to get the train to the airport, I passed by the house (above) where W.H. Auden died in 1973.  And less than 50 yards away, also on Wallfischgasse - indeed on the corner of Kaerntnerstrasse -  was a Viennese coffee house, which Auden might NOT have appreciated. 

Our friend and colleague Andrew Patner by nice coincidence forwarded to me last week this piece in the Daily Telegraph about Auden and the decline and fall of so many good things..........are we curmudgeons or what?

Thursday in Vienna

I had time for other things yesterday, most invigoratingly a return to the MuseumsQuartier where the Adams had been performed on Tuesday night in the Kunsthalle.  There is a marvelous photo exhibition there until January - Americans.  Not to be missed - with some wonderful Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander, and many others.  The whole campus is greatly animated with a huge number of activities in every known medium.  Vienna is buzzing.....

Also yesterday I had time to catch up with a couple of COT alumnae - Jane Archibald who was our Susanna in 2005 (and had been in Agrippina in 2003) who is now a member of the ensemble at the Vienna State Opera;  and Speranza Scappucci, a COT music staffer who is now on the music staff at the Staatsoper. 

And so to the second performance of A Flowering Tree.  I was glad to see Alex Ross back in the audience for a second bite - he seems to be ebullient with his book soon to be delivered to his publisher after five years or so hard labor.  What a relief that will be!  And Simon Rattle took a break from his Berlin Philharmonic tour to hear this piece which he will be conducting in Berlin in December.  He was enthralled - no doubt about it!  The evening was preceded by a short ceremony paying tribute to the remarkable Venezuelan, Jose Antonio Abreu, who has transformed the lives of hundred of thousands of young people in his country through music.  It is a remarkable story - and we saw some of what has been accomplished in Vienna this week where orchestra and chorus from Venezuela have been the cornerstones of the Flowering Tree production.

I fly to Duesseldorf this morning and then on to Guetersloh.  It is now time for packing up and breakfast......

Second performance

The second Flowering Tree performance was a huge leap ahead from the already beautiful and moving opening night on Tuesday.  I am just back from the performance and pretty well exhausted at the end of this day.  So no big blog tonight!  But there will be a good posting tomorrow before I leave for Germany at midday.