Brian Dickie

Presenting "The Blogging Life" - oh dear!

I was on a panel this morning at an Arts and Business Council workshop about "Blogs and Online Communities" and duly presented myself at the offices of Baker and McKenzie high up in one of the Prudential Plaza towers overlooking Millennium Park and South across Lake Michigan.  See here in a quick snap with my cell phone's camera - click to enlarge - really not bad for a phone!

Most of the time was taken up with "Everything you wanted to know about Blogging and Online communities".  This was something of a marathon but was clearly a huge success given the number of questions asked.  Then we had one of those typically excellent US office sandwich lunches and continued with two case studies - Lookingglass Theatre Company, and my little segment at which I endeavored to explain the why and how etc. of this blog.  There was a large turnout and we scrambled to get done by 1pm.  Many good colleagues were there including Karen Fishman of Music of the Baroque, and Jim Ginsburg of Cedille Records - not to mention our wonderful Director of Marketing at COT Colleen Flanigan.  I am now back in the office with a good many fund raising tasks to get accomplished this afternoon.  Its hot and steamy outside so its good to be in here being air conditioned!

Almost done!

And almost done in as well after this marathon of the last three weeks.  The very very last bit is tomorrow in London, and thats only got three hours rather than a full day.  So there will be time for other things - like catching up with some of my family.  I am now at Dusseldorf Airport all set to go and hoping that there will not be any delays this time.  I am hoping that an aircraft like this will take me away from here within the  next hour.  Full of optimism I will be changing the clock on the right.

We had another long frustrating day today.  But there was a delightful  young Russian soprano from St Petersburg studying in Dortmund for a year.  She should get through.  And a handful of others but no knockouts today.  The list for London looks interesting - at least one major future star is on the list so unless he messes up he will be through with a major opportunity to hit the big money.  Top prize is $20,000 which is nice of you can get it.  And someone will......there are five other nice prizes too so all good ones are in with a chance.

My blog seems to be getting a lot of attention - the numbers have soared over the last few days and are breaking all previous records!  Maybe its the Desperate Opera Wife effect  - or maybe the COT website which has mischievously in my absence put up an extra notice about it.  See that here if you haven't already!

I will be back in the office on Monday so we will all be able to calm down again! 

Day of much action

It was a long one - and 40 or so singers went through the process at the Prinzregentheater, lovely place that it is.  And after the old picture on the blog posting below, here is the latest - at 10.15 this morning.

This grand place is of sentimental importance to me since in in 1961 it was the home of the Bayerischer Staatsoper when I made my first operatic visit to this city, the first of very many indeed during the ensuing 46 years.  That year I saw Arabella with Fischer-Dieskau and Lisa della Casa.  And early Jess Thomas appearances in Meistersinger and Parsifal.  Meanwhile down the road in Salzburg Rosenkavalier with Schwarzkopf, Ludwig and Rothenberger.  And Don Giovanni with Waechter in the title role and Leontyne Price as Donna Anna.  All at prices affordable to a student at Trinity College, Dublin where I was at that time.  It has changed I am afraid.  And probably students now don't care anyway.  But we did!

Anyway, back to the auditions.  There were a couple of stunners.  That's a good day so I am happy!  We have another 40 tomorrow so we may end up with a good crop from Munich.

I went back then to the hotel for a quick reunion with the Desperate Operawife and this time the husband came along and took this picture of Bloggers United!  I was terribly late so we scarcely had time for the photo shoot before I had a meeting and dinner with the excellent Manfred Schweigkofler, king of all things culturally interesting in Bolzano.  We may be collaborating on The Flowering Tree next year.  That is an exciting partnership for COT.  And for them too of course......

Bloggers unite!

Well the news of the day is that I have bonded with Desperate Opera Wife, a fellow opera blogger who is married to a former member of the COT Young Artists program and now living in Germany where he is a valued member of the Bavarian State Opera company.  I have been linking to her website for some time.  She promised to have a new post up this evening but as yet there is nothing.  I hope she did not fall off her bicycle on her way home after a most enjoyable hour spent in the bar of my hotel.  Her husband had an orchestral rehearsal this evening but I hope to meet up with them both again tomorrow.  There are excellent American singers working all over Europe.  But few, if any, are more of an adornment to their cities, in this case Munich, than this couple.  I am happy if COT made even a small contribution to improving life in Munich!

We met up this evening with the Bertelsmann team - the same group that made auditions here last time, in 2005, such a pleasure.  These are our two pianists - Peter Nelson and Celine Dutilly, stalwart contributors to Neue Stimmen for many years now. 

I am now going to have an early night.  Its only 10.15 - but a long day tomorrow.