It's Tuesday already?

Hey All! So here's the deal. Brenda and I are not living at our apartment this week but rather at a friend's house in a small town just outside of Frankfurt. Why you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Our friends, Peter and Jerrode, decided to take a trip to Prague for Jerrode's birthday. Their 9 year old son had school, however, so he needed to stay home. That's where we come in. They asked us if we'd help out and we gladly agreed to look after their wonderful son for a few days.

Other than that, I've been busy with Parsifal rehearsals and Brenda is getting some time off in-between performances. On Saturday, we made some major progress on Brenda's website. We've posted it online and you can check it out here:

www.brendarae.com

Feel free to let us know if you notice anything wrong with the site or have problems viewing any of the content. I assume that all of you non-mac users will have problems with the audio. That's something Brenda and I are trying to get figured out.

Anyway, it's getting late and my alarm will be going off in 6 hours. I hope that you all have a wonderful week and I'll talk at you next monday. Auf Wiedersehen!

Guten Abend

Hello all! I hope you had a nice weekend. Ours went by very quickly since we were entertaining a guest and, on top of that, Brenda premiered an opera. Speaking of which, Orlando Furioso was outstanding last night. Everyone in the cast did a great job and the audience obviously loved it. If you'd care to see some pictures from the show you can do so here. I'll go to another performance later on and get some pictures of Brenda in her costumes backstage. She has multiple outfits for the show and she looks gorgeous in all of them.

My rehearsals for Parsifal went well today. We are performing the opera in German so I got to put my American accent on display for all of the native German speakers in the room. They went easy on me and pointed out just a couple of things to work on. Since rehearsal ended, I've been muttering the word "human" to myself non-stop. I'd explain further but its getting late so you'll just have to trust me when I say that it helps my German pronunciation.

Now that Brenda is finished with rehearsals for Orlando Furioso, she'll have a bit more time to focus on other things. She is singing the title role in two operas coming up later this season so learning those pieces will certainly occupy some of her time. Also, I'm hoping we can use some of her free time to get to the gym a bit more often. The cold weather, coupled with Brenda's busy schedule, has prevented us from schlepping in to the gym as often as I'd like. Now that her schedule is more open, however, we'll have to get back into it.

Brenda is at Avatar right now with our friends Kris and Florian. I wasn't able to join since I had rehearsal but I'm excited to find out how they liked it. I've only heard good things. Well, it's getting late and I should turn in. Until next time, have a great week!

He, du da!

Hey all! I don't have much time to write but I wanted to get you up to speed on a few things. First, Brenda is opening the opera Orlando Furioso tomorrow at Oper Frankfurt. It should be a great time. I've already seen it 1 and 1/2 times and it's really well sung and performed by everyone in the cast. Our friend Kris is in town visiting and will be seeing the opera and joining us at the after party.

Second, we don't have to move...yet. On Monday, we found out that our apartment had been sold. Long, long, long story short. Our new landlord wanted more rent and we didn't want to pay it. We worked something out and will be staying in our apartment until the end of June at which point we'll find a bigger and better (and cheaper) place to live. I could probably write a book about all of the crazy experiences we've had in this apartment. You can look forward to a few of the most entertaining stories in future posts.

Lastly, I start rehearsals for the opera Parsifal on Monday. I'm a good mix of excited and nervous. It will be great to do some more singing and to try and use some of this German I've been learning. I'll check back in with you all on Monday and give you a full report of Brenda's performance as well as my rehearsal. Until then, have a great weekend!

Brenda's Birthday!

Hello friends! I'm very happy to announce that today is Brenda's birthday! She celebrated in exceptional fashion by spending the whole day at rehearsals at the opera house. Not exactly her first choice of things to do on her birthday but there are worse things. I spent a lot of the day with her at the opera house and was even there until the bitter end, which was about 11:45 pm our time. Therefore, I am depriving you of the lengthier and wittier blog that you were expecting today. I will, however, post something later in the week, which will discuss Brenda's birthday in further detail as well as our possible, and very inconvenient, upcoming move. Until then, have a great week!

One more memory from Bonn

Hey All! I wanted to share a little something with you that Brenda and I saw in Bonn. As you know, Brenda and I are suckers for Mexican food. Well, when we were in Bonn last weekend, we stumbled across a restaurant simply named "Tacos" and we couldn't resist. We realized shortly after entering that it was a German imitation of an American imitation of a Mexican restaurant. Kind of like a German attempt to recreate Carlos O'Kelly's without the refried beans. Anyway, as we were sitting at the table enjoying our chips and salsa, I noticed an interesting sign on the wall behind Brenda. We didn't have our camera but we did have Brenda's iPhone and so we took a quick pic.

The sign, which was on the wall right next to the bar, read: "Alle Cocktails auch zum mitnehmen" or in English "All of the cocktails can also be made to-go". Imagine ordering a margarita in a styrofoam cup and taking it to-go. Ah, I do love the differences between our countries.

Anyway, I thought you might get a chuckle out of that. I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll talk to you on Monday!

Brenda sprang and sang

Hey All! As you probably already know, Brenda sang a wonderful performance of Musetta in La Bohème last night in Bonn. The soprano that was supposed to sing the role had a cold and so Theater Bonn lit the beacons of Gondor and Brenda came to their aid. (Sorry, we've been watching Lord of the Rings a lot lately.)

First off, the ride up to Bonn on Saturday was absolutely stunning. There has been an unusual amount of snow in Germany this Winter - and in the rest of the world it seems - and so the already beautiful German countryside became even more impressive. Bonn is only 2 hours away from Frankfurt and much of our trip was spent staring out of the window at old castles, quaint German towns and snow covered vineyards built into steep hillsides.

The city of Bonn proved to be quite lovely, as well. As you might imagine, we didn't have much chance to explore the city but our hotel was located in the center of town, very close to the opera house. One of the main attractions is Beethoven's birth house. We weren't able to take a tour with such limited time in Bonn but that will give us a good excuse to return someday.

Theater Bonn

Theater Bonn is a nice sized theater with seats numbering somewhere around 1000. The audience was almost totally full and they obviously enjoyed the show thoroughly. Last night's performance was the last La Bohème of the season.

Brenda as Musetta in La Bohème.

Brenda said everyone was really friendly and welcoming at the opera house. The singers in the cast hailed from all over the world, which is par for the course in the opera world.

Brenda and Lee Poulis.

Lee sang the role of Marcello.

Overall, the show was great. Brenda was fantastic, as usual, and she looked totally natural performing unfamiliar stage direction in a brand new costume with completely different colleagues. She came off looking, and sounding, amazing.

The other members of the cast were very good, as well. The concept for the direction was not my cup of tea but that's ok. We do live in Germany, after all, and they are famous for their crazy stagings.

This morning we got up, had a nice breakfast at the hotel and, after doing a little shopping, hopped on a fast train back to Frankfurt. All-in-all, it was a 48 hour time commitment. I'm ready to do it again next weekend.

Before I bid you goodnight, I'd like to follow up on a previous blog entry. I'm sure you remember our instructional Hefeweizen entry. You may also recall that Brenda was quite ashamed of the amount of head that was on the beer that she poured. Well, we had Florian and Marlar over again to give us another lesson on how to pour the perfect Hefeweizen and this time Brenda got it spot on.

That is an authentic German thumbs up.

Well, that about does it. If you have any questions about Brenda's einspringen and/or our trip to Bonn, feel free to post them in the comment section of the blog and I will get back to you. Until next time, have a great week!

Bon(n)jour

Greetings from Bonn! Yesterday, Brenda was offered an opportunity to einspringen, or "jump in", for a singer who, for whatever reason, was indisposed. The role she is jumping in for is Musetta in La Bohème. A role, you may remember, she performed in Frankfurt not all that long ago. Brenda didn't hesitate in accepting the offer and this morning we hopped on a train to Bonn.

This is Brenda's first einspringen and she is very excited. At the moment, she is being fitted for her costume. Later this afternoon she will meet with the assistant director to discuss the staging. She will have a staging rehearsal with a couple other members of the cast tomorrow as well as a musical rehearsal. The performance is tomorrow night.

This much notice is really a luxury for an einspringen. Often, a singer only gets a few hours notice and is forced to stumble their way through an unknown production with barely any rehearsal at all.

If you care to look at some of the production photos from Bonn's La Bohème, you can do so here.

I'm excited that I get to tag along for this trip. We'll be sure to take some photos and post them on the blog as well as a recap on how the weekend goes. Until then, I hope you all have a great weekend!