Since I arrived in Amsterdam last Friday I feel as though I have been sprinting non stop and by the time I got home briefly on Tuesday just before midnight I was thinking "there has to be a better way"! Well there is - I am now in Madrid for some well earned leisure. The auditions are this afternoon and we will be done in time for me to go to the Capriccio Pre Dress at the Teatro Real, followed by a late Spanish dinner. And yesterday evening some refreshment at sun down with Justin Way, a much loved colleague from Chicago days, and a pillar now of the Teatro Real. Madrid is deliciously warm - 28C which is around 83F.
We had a really good day in Amsterdam last Saturday - rich pickings indeed with two qualifiers and no less than seven really excellent young people on the waiting list which we will be diving into after the Munich auditions which are on June 11 and 12. We were delighted to find one candidate out of nowhere - it is usually the case that at least the names of the best ones are familiar to us. So it is is always a treat to have a Eureka moment - they are few and far between and wonderful!
Our long day in Amsterdam ended with a dinner with our hosts at the Dutch National Opera, Sophie de Lindt and Rosemary Joshua, at the lovely and excellent Plantage Restaurant (seen above). Delicious in all respects and a great opportunity to celebrate Sophie's first season as the director of the DNO. She is on the Neue Stimmen finals jury so we are looking forward to seeing her in the peace and quiet of Gütersloh for a whole week in October!
Next stop was Frankfurt where we took in a performance of Rodelinda and a recital by Cecelia Hall in addition to two very intensive days of auditions.
Claus Guth's very beautiful production of Rodelinda originated in Madrid - and it was a pleasure to hear and see Lucy Crowe on top form as well as two former successful Neue Stimmen finalists, Jakub Józef Orliński and Božidar Smiljanić making distinguished contributions to a great evening of Handel singing.
Following the auditions on Monday Cecelia Hall gave a delicious short recital of Mahler and Schoenberg songs, followed by a ravishing performance of Les nuits d'été. How wonderfully Cecelia has blossomed as an artist since I first heard her as an undergraduate at De Paul all those years ago, then in Juilliard, and then in the title role in COT's Teseo back in 2012. She has some great assignments coming up in Frankfurt where she is currently singing Marguerite in their Damnation de Faust. If you are in Frankfurt in the coming year you may well be lucky!!
Of course the main purpose of my Frankfurt visit was the auditions - and the great pleasure was being with Bernd Loebe, director of the Frankfurt Opera, and a formidable companion on the audition panel. His track record of hiring remarkable young singers before anyone else is second to none. We found some finalists but I am not sure that there were any of those Eureka moments that I always hope for!
And so on Tuesday I returned to London arriving home in Battersea just before midnight. A day off, then yesterday to Madrid.
Our auditions today are in the Teatro Real, seen here yesterday evening, as every evening, with lots of people around in the warmth at the end of the day. I am so happy to be in this wonderful city again!
Comments