Saturday 21 January 2012

Cultural Weekend

This weekend we have been to two cultural events, on Friday night to the theatre to see the famous Canadian play which has been translated in numerous languages and produced around the world in the last 15 years entitled Two Pianos Four Hands by Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt. It chronicles the dreams of two boys who aspire to concert pianist stardom. Highly entertaining with lots of piano playing. It reminded me of my own days when as a youth I took piano lessons. Then this afternoon, we went to see live from New York, MET performance of The Enchanted Island by Jeremy Sams. The Metropolitan Opera has been on the radio for more years than I can remember, decades really and heard around the world.  Now its HD Live in large cinemas and it is as if you were there in person. The cinema was full and it is shown in another cinema in Ottawa, so during the MET Season seven cinemas in Ottawa pack them in to see these live performances. There is a great demand and it is hugely popular and a great way to spend a cold winter afternoon, today it was -23C.  The conductor was William Christie who was sporting his Legion d'Honneur. The Cast was Neptune, Placido Domingo, it was his birthday today, Sycorax, Joyce Didonato who we saw in Milan at La Scala, Caliban, Luca Pisaroni who we saw in Salzburg and in Ravena, Prospero, David Daniels. We had such great fun and I enjoyed my afternoon immensely. A lavish production, great music of the Baroque era. Jeremy Sams used music by Handel and others and simply put in new wording to very familiar tunes. I have to say that the wording was sort of pedestrian but nonetheless enjoyable.

Today was a sunny winter day and thousands of people were skating on the Rideau Canal, so far 4.3 km are open but next week it will be the full 11Km within the Capital. You get a full workout on such a long stretch of the skate way.
Tonight I am making chicken soup from scratch, I love to do this, it brings back such wonderful memories of my childhood and I basically copy my Mom's recipe, easy as pie and its smell wonderful.     

2 comments:

  1. I saw it too; I enjoyed it very much.
    Sadly, Mr. Domingo I thought was the weakest of the group.
    Ariel was fabulous but Sycorax was really good.

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  2. Placido Domingo is 71 but the voice is still strong, on the other hand David Daniels has paled. The other counter tenor playing the Duke who arrives at the end of the opera was shrill, did not like him at all. Overall it was fun.

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