trip summary

Since discovering operas back in 2009, I have traveled to many places and meet up with very nice old and new friends along the way. But for the most part I have been traveling alone. In fact, the last time I traveled with a “buddy” and had this much fun was with my younger sister on our first ever trip to Europe. No tumbling, but we incrementally lost more and more things along the way while being hungry, sneaking for food, arguing, all the way to madness of fun to the end. This trip reminds me so much of that. It all started last September when 2 things occurred at about the same time: my discovery of Sara Mingardo and a stressful business trip to London. The only thing pleasant about that trip was 2 consecutive meetings, one with an old friend on his way in, and one while I was on the way out criss-crossing with Dehggial. Within that one hour in a busy and loud train station, we exchanged enough excitement about music to sort out that I want to come back precisely this May and that I agreed immediately to stay on her couch upon the first suggestive offer :-). May is also the time when I become useless here in Boston due to pollen so am always on the look-out for refuge in some part of Europe for *extended* period. Ideally, to not outstay my welcome, I would shift from place to place while plotting some music stops along the way. So when Dehggi mentioned she’d like to join for the small excursion to Basel, naturally it’d be part of the package to re-visit my 2nd home in Munich if anything was to take place at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Of course with my sister we knew each other so long we can laugh/joke after heated arguments arisen from hunger/exhaustion. With a stranger, there is always *some* risk, but if our 1-hr lively exchange offers any clue, it is that at least we would have plenty of things to say and the aim is not to kill the other by the end :-).

So now, onto bullet-point running-commentary format as I think it’s easier this way to follow the traditional slide-show. Surprisingly I took very little photos, must have been spending all that time talking/sleeping/running.
– Music: it has to be from the lunch recital :-).
– Wigmore Hall: there is no need for introduction. If you have a chance, attend a concert here. What luxury.
– Dorothea Röschmann: What a voice! For some reason the first evening sitting in the back of the hall my complete-jet-lagged brain was more tuned to Mitsuko Uchida’s gorgeous piano playing while trying to get used to DR’s voice. As Dehggi mentioned in her post, by the 2nd performance she pushed a bit less and thus everything was working beautifully. Also, sitting in close proximity at 90° angle is PERFECT, no ear-drum hazard. Incredibly descriptive voice. And you get to see how she used her facial muscles too. Regarding Mitsuko’s back, it’s quite amazing she played everything with almost absolute still posture! And from the distance you can tell she was “singing” along with DR too, a very playful and charming personality.
– noodle soup: generally speaking, if I stay at your place for more than 2 days and you can offer a kitchen, point me to Chinatown, have a proper knife, and a pot that can hold an entire chicken, I will cook. I have it sorted out now: might as well cook what i really want to eat, in case the host can not handel, i get to eat the whole thing 😀 . But of course it is very lovely if we can also share the meal. In fact some of the warmest time we had on this trip was shared meals with friends.
– hand-waving photos: the camera is sort of old/new, the lens in my old one since 2010 was ruined and I got a very similar one, except they’re thinking for you now with all sorts of “fancy” craps that resulted in all those blurry photos on the first night at Wigmore Hall. No more after a night playing with the cute cat and hand waving (motion in low-light simulation).
– Basel is such a lovely small city! with an interesting concert hall (called casino), a really cool theater, a looooovely river with people sitting on the bank drinking beer enjoying life.
– Vesselina Kasarova singing Cleopatre: very intense! at such close proximity (check out Dehggi’s post for related hazard). This is one of those very rare occasions I almost didn’t pay attention to the orchestra, just her phrasing! It definitely helped to know the piece so well (hearing), as you can anticipate what is coming next and how she phrased it and how the orchestra fit in. Slightly related, there was a large number of WS at the show! she must have gathered up all of Basel’s and surrounding towns’ troups, quite impressive.
– Juditha Triumphans!!!!! on the same night we listened to Cleopatre! ARRRGHHHH (more on this later)

– Verdi versus Vivaldi: Suddenly the german rail went on strike! so we missed the beginning of Frau Harteros in La Forza, ARRRGH. But we caught the end, except she was out of view the entire ending due to “dying” on the ground!! NOT ON THE TABLE!! WHY NOT??? But her phrasing dear readers, absolutely exquisite. It is ashamed she has so little to sing. In fact, so little that by the 2nd performance I was angry! This whole opera is a fraud! There’s little in the music, they just went on and on to câu giờ ** so the Kaufmann tenor’s fans can scream their heads off cheering. Even with my absolute admiration for AH’s singing, I totally lost my patience in the middle 2-hour and in fact snoozed off. But ANGER: because in Basel on the same night was Juditha Triumphans, and had I known all this ahead of time (rail strike be damned), I would have bought instead: a trip to Passau for the I Capuleti mentioned on DTO’s site followed by a direct flight to Basel the next morning for Juditha, followed by yet another early flight back to London in time for Sara Mingardo. As was, grrrr! (Oh right, i thought ok, since I was going to have to sit through it, might as well really focus to see if I like JK’s singing.. sorry, snoozed off very well, had 2 dreams even!)
– selfie: ha, we had great fun both in Basel and Munich, through all the running and (spectacular) tumbling (me) and sleeping + eating arrangements. But at the Bayerische Staatsoper, there were SIX curtain calls and we caught the last for our selfie to spot a row of finely-dressed ladies cheering for, we could only assumed, JK :-).
– ham + bread: if I could arrange my trip somehow to always land first in Germany to get all of these, then to Switzerland for chocolate, the rest of the trip would be so set :-).

So, that sort of summarize the super fun trip. We talked plenty into the days/nights/mornings, covering pretty much everything, including if VK ever revive Orphée we will organize a WS van to follow her the show around europe :D. I have never traveled on such a trip with an “opera buddy” before, the experience was simply fantastic. So, a wrap-up with many thanks to Dehggi for hosting and fingers crossed for more fun in the future!

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** fishing for time, generally used by (a) football players toward the end of the match when they’re ahead, involving falling down on ground grabbing legs in rolling around in pain until the ref blows the final ending whistle, (b) kids when they don’t want to sleep yet, involving asking for water 20 times…