Time for some R&R

Hey All! Greetings from Wisconsin. Since arriving in the US last week we’ve been busy seeing friends and family and moving out of our apartment in Iowa City. We first met up with our friends Dan and Whitney for a few days before she left for Japan where she is going to spend the next year teaching English. They keep a weekly blog (sound familiar?) which is very entertaining and will undoubtedly contain a lot of posts about living in Japan over the upcoming year. If you care to read it you can do so here.

Brenda and I met up with one of my professors and his wife last week. We first saw them this summer in Vienna after Brenda jumped in at the Vienna State Opera. They are both from Austria and happened to be in Vienna on vacation when we were there. They had us over for dinner last week in Iowa City and we enjoyed discussing opera (they are huge classical music fans) and eating the delicious desserts they made.

Much of our time since we’ve been back has been spent packing up and clearing out our Iowa City apartment. We were able to get everything out and into a storage unit just in time (my parents deserve a lot of the credit). We’re now in Wisconsin visiting Brenda’s parents and her sister and enjoying some vacation. We went to an Ansel Adams exhibit earlier today and we’re off to Door County tomorrow. We’ll take the camera so we can share some pictures with you next week.

One last thing, Brenda and I made her a new website which you can see at www.brendarae.com. Feel free to let us know what you think. 

Sounds like everyone is downstairs having a good time so I had better go join them. I hope you all get to enjoy some vacation of your own and I’ll talk to you next week!

Brenda, Drew and their parents.

My wife the robot

Hello all! Since I'm officially on vacation now, I figured I'd give Chad  a break from writing the blog and take a turn myself. It was quite an eventful week, and a very nice way to end my season! The opening of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" went very well, and I didn't even forget my choreography. As some of you may remember, I've sung the role of Olympia in Frankfurt before, and I had to do a rather involved dance, based on Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" dance. I must say, it was rather nice to only have to move my upper body in this production! For the show in Munich, I stood behind a table which hid my legs, and my skirt was spread over it, and there were puppet legs peeking out of the skirt. This meant that a puppeteer had to sit right behind me (almost under me!) and reach through my own legs to control the puppet legs. Quite a tight fit, but we became friends right away, and everything worked very well! I wish I had a video of it, because I think the effect is very funny. Sometimes it's great to have the role that makes the audience laugh, even though I do love making people cry. Ha!

 Brenda as Olympia.

 Brenda as Olympia sneezing.

A view of the Bavarian State Opera. 

The day after the show, Chad and I went to a great museum called the Neues Pinakothek. This museum housed works from the 1700s to the early 1900s. It was a rainy day - so, perfect weather to stroll through a museum! We saw some famous works of art by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Rodin, and also Van Gogh, including this beautiful painting!

Chad enjoying art.

On Saturday, we experienced one of nature's greatest beauties: the Alps! We took a two hour train ride to Mittenwald, which is very close to the Austrian border. Once there, I somehow convinced Chad to take a cable car up the very steep slope to the top of the mountain. The weather wasn't great, but we still got some amazing views. There was also a restaurant at the top, so of course we had to try the local beer and cheese!

Brenda in the cable car that took us up to the top of the mountain.

The view from the top. 

Mittenwald

Sunday was pretty quiet, and my thoughts were with my twin, Drew, who was participating in the sprint triathlon that we were supposed to do together. She absolutely ROCKED it! For those of you who don't know, the distances were: .5 miles of swimming, 12 miles of biking, and 3.1 miles of running. She finished all that in just over 1 hour and 30 minutes! I'm impressed.

Yesterday was my last performance of the season, and it turned out to be quite memorable! Of course I enjoyed being onstage as I always do, but during the intermission I got to meet the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who was attending the performance! There is a picture of us together, but apparently I'm not allowed to publicly share it! It's pretty priceless though: I look like a character from a Disney movie in my costume, and next to me there's one of the most powerful politicians in the world. Life is pretty crazy.

Well, I think I shall sign off and entertain my husband! We're on the train back to Frankfurt, and we fly to the US tomorrow morning. Hope you're all staying cool!

10 loads of laundry later...

Hey All! Greetings from Munich. Brenda and I arrived in the city of giant beers and lederhosen on Sunday. We're staying at a hotel in the middle of town that is very close to the Bavarian State Opera and a stone's throw from the famous Hofbräuhaus (we may even go there for dinner tonight!). Brenda has already had three rehearsals since we arrived on Sunday, and she won't have any more between now and the first performance on Thursday. Luckily she knows this role very well (she performed it last fall in Frankfurt) and she feels totally ready for the performances.

The Bavarian State Opera

Last Friday and Saturday, Brenda performed with the Rheingau Musik Festival at Kloster Eberbach. It was an evening of Mozart; Brenda sang a couple of arias from Zaide and was the soprano soloist for another piece. She was fantastic, of course. Florian and Marlar came to the second performance which was very sweet of them considering Saturday night was Florian's last night in Frankfurt for a while. Florian will be singing with the opera house in Copenhagen for the next year, and he and Marlar got on the road Sunday to drive up there. If you care to follow Florian's escapades in Copenhagen you can do so by reading his blog. The URL is: http://flohnemainkopenhagen.blogspot.de/. He writes the entries in German but then translates them into English through an online translator. The English will undoubtedly be funny but you would probably still get the gist.

 Kloster Eberbach

 Kloster Eberbach is famous in part for its wine. If you look closely you should be able to make out a vineyard on the hillside. Also, the movie "The Name of the Rose" was partially filmed there.

That's pretty much what we've been up to. Next Tuesday Brenda and I will be on our way back to Frankfurt and then we're off to the US the next day. I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday!

A happy little snail.

Clean clothes once again

Hey All! Things have been pretty calm here in Mainhattan since I wrote to you on Saturday. Brenda went to Munich for a couple of rehearsals and is on a train heading home at this very moment. I stayed home and tidied up the apartment a little bit. We had been neglecting it due to our recent travels. Not to mention the mountain of clothes (actually there were a couple of mountains - I guess you could call it a mountain range of clothes) that had piled up since our washing machine broke. You can imagine my excitement today when our new washing machine arrived. 

I think we should name him.

I felt bad for the two delivery guys who had to carry the washing machine up the 65 stairs to our apartment, install it, and then carry our old washing machine back down. I think they felt bad about it, too.

I thought I'd share a few more pictures with you from our travels. Below is a picture of a park near where I'll be studying in Hamburg this fall. If you look closely you can just make out the corner of a building below that radio tower. That is Bucerius Law School. It's actually quite close to the opera house in Hamburg so I'll be able to see a show when I'm sick of studying.

When my parents and I were in Berlin, we stayed at a friend's apartment that is right next to Brandenburger Tor. Our trip happened to coincide with two European soccer championship games, and Germany was playing in one of them. Brandenburger Tor is right next to a big park, and the city of Berlin uses the area for special events like New Years Eve celebrations and viewing major soccer games. The night that Germany played there were thousands of people gathered right outside of our apartment watching the game on huge TV screens. 

Brandenburger Tor

 Our view of soccer fans definitely not enjoying that game.

After Berlin (and after a quick trip back to Vienna) we all headed to Paris. Paris is a beautiful city, and you could spend a lot of time there seeing everything it has to offer. We were only there for a couple of days, but we saw a lot in that time.

 The obligatory Eiffel Tower picture.

Versailles's backyard. 

It'd be nice to live there, but trimming the hedges would be a nightmare.

I should probably get going. Brenda will be home any minute, and there are a few more things I should get done before she arrives. Next week I'll be writing to you from Munich. Until then, have a great week!

hither and yon

Hey All! It's nice to be writing to you this evening. I've been wanting to fill you in on what we've been up to recently but, as I'm sure you gathered from my last two posts, we've been busy. It has been the good kind of busy, though. Between Brenda's performances in Vienna and our vacationing with my parents through Europe, we haven't had many quiet nights in Frankfurt. Tonight Brenda and I are enjoying an evening at home. We aren't getting too comfortable, though. Brenda is heading to Munich tomorrow to start rehearsals for another opera.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Vienna State Opera asked Brenda to jump in on short notice for an ailing singer. Brenda ended up doing three of the four performances in the run. In fact, her last performance was the Vienna State Opera's last show of the season. That performance was broadcast live over the radio and also projected onto the side of the opera house so people outside could watch it for free. We've heard that Brenda's performance will be rebroadcast in the coming months by numerous radio stations throughout Europe.

My parents and I went to Brenda's first performance which happened to be the same day they landed in Germany. I picked them up at the airport at 8:30 am, brought them home, made them a cup of coffee, and then forced them to go back to the airport and get on a plane to Vienna. I am really impressed that they managed to stay awake the whole day.

You can't even tell that they had been awake for almost 30 hours.

I really have to stress how big of a deal it was for Brenda to sing the title role in an opera at the Vienna State Opera. If I knew anything about baseball I would say that it was kind of like she was the starting pitcher for the Yankees (or your favorite baseball team). And it was the World Series. And she pitched a no-hitter. It was an amazing thing, and I couldn't be more proud of her.

A picture of Brenda taken from her first performance outside of the Vienna State Opera. 

If you look closely you can see the reflection of her biggest fan in the glass.

 Brenda outside of her dressing room.

 

Audience members enjoying a drink before the show.

As you may recall, Brenda did an opera called The Rake's Progress a month or so ago. A local magazine decided to do an article about the production, and they focused on Brenda. When Brenda and I were out and about yesterday we picked up a couple of copies.

 The magazine.

A close up. 

A look inside.

So that's pretty much what Brenda has been up to. She will be doing two concerts next week at a music festival in the area and shortly thereafter she'll be doing a couple of performances at the Bavarian State Opera. After that she will get to take a well-earned break. 

In addition to forcing my parents to go to Vienna without any sleep, we took them to Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris. We saw a lot of the big sites and we ate a lot of good food. My dad was on a mission to eat as many chocolate croissants as he could get his hands on. He did well. We had a great time with my parents - as we always do. I think they had a good time, too. They didn't even get mad at us when we abandoned them in Frankfurt for two nights while I flew to Vienna to see Brenda's last performance. They've got this Germany thing down pat.

I think I will call it a night. There are a few more things that I could share with you (such as our washing machine is broken and I keep buying underwear instead of going to a laundromat) but some things are better left unsaid. I hope you all have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you on Tuesday.