7 January 2014 Christmas Season is Officially over!!!

So it is over, we had some fierce weather from 23 December onwards. We took down the decorations today house is back to normal.  It also means we now enter the dark period of winter, no festive lights, it's winter and the reality of icy sidewalks and difficult driving conditions, cold unpleasant weather and dark days with little sunlight is our lot.

            The tree waiting to be put away, puppies taking the morning sun. 

In Ottawa we will have a kind of, sort of bureaucratically nice Festival called Winterlude Jan. 31 to Feb. 17.
Last year the weather cooperated and the ice sculptures at Confederation Park where interesting. Skating on the Rideau Canal was good. Hopefully this year the weather will stay sufficiently cold for all the outdoor activities, if not it can be a watery mess. Winterlude is really a weekend carnival of sorts, all activities are concentrated on the weekends of the festival with nothing much happening during the week. The activities are mostly about skating on the canal with activities for children.
Though it is 30 years old it seems that the organizers have not much thought about what else they could do to make this festival more interesting to visiting tourists from abroad and for the population in general.

Until the May Tulip Festival that is pretty much all there is in Ottawa, meaning this is the worst of time in the Capital. Lucky those who can escape to Florida or warmer climes wherever they may be.

For me it will be a return to my volunteer activities, reading and being a pillow to my dogs.
I am reading the new biography of Johnny Cash by Robert Hilbrun, a fascinating book, I can see why it got such good reviews.  I am not a Cash fan but he was a popular music figure while I grew up and remember him from the 1970's.

As for being a pillow for my dogs, well the hounds have decided that they can just sleep on us whenever they feel like it. Just climb on top and make themselves comfortable. They go into a deep sleep and weigh more than elephants. After a while you have to move them, to which they do not take kindly, giving you sleepy eyes dirty looks, uncomprehending.

Of course Nicky can be bought off for the price of a cookie, just say the word ''Biscuit'' and he stares at you the way wolves do before the kill. Biscuit is an important word not to be fooled with. Nora is the same though not so obvious. She also will make herself comfortable on you but you won't be, it is very one sided. Hounds will be hounds I suppose.

25 November only 30 days to go

We are now only one month away from Christmas Day. Given that it is very cold outside though sunny  and we do not have snow yet. The cold wind reminded me that the Season is very near us.

Here is some beautiful music for the Christmas Season. O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen, an American composer of Danish origin. This composition is taken from the Christmas Morning Service and was composed in 1994.  Sung by a wonderful choir.




Latin Text

O magnum mysterium,

et admirabile sacramentum,

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,

jacentem in praesepio!

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera

meruerunt portare

Dominum Christum.

Alleluia.

This version by one of my favourite composer Francis Poulenc of the same piece by the Oxford Choir. Composed at an earlier period of the XXth Century.




This music comes to me after hearing our friend C.P. who has a beautiful soprano voice, she sings with one of the more famous and well established Choirs in Ottawa. We have been at several of their concerts to hear them.

Opening night

Last night, Saturday 23 January, we went to the Opening of the New Season at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. The first night was the opera Falstaff. The sets were designed in 1964 by Franco Zeffirelli for the Metropolitain Opera house in New York.
This is grand opera with wonderful music and if well staged is a great piece of comedy, it is a masterpiece by Giuseppe Verdi.

We arrived at the Opera house and like all great first nights in Rome, it was a throw back to the 19th century, lots of officers in splendid uniforms with silver and gold braids with great cavalry boots and gleaming swords, a traffic jam of shiny expensive limousines, ladies covered in furs and diamonds, gentlemen in tuxedos and white silk scarves and great capes. Lots of paparazzi snapping flash photo at the crowd walking down the piazza in front of the teatro dell'Opera. Because it is the opening night of the new season, the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano came, so in the grand style the Carabinieri Guard of honor in their wonderful parade uniform were present, a red carpet, ornamental trees and exotic flowers, the Corps de ballet, composed of young girls about 8 yrs old in pink tutus was lining the great staircase, it is customary to say to them as you ascend, bello, carini, and they in turn smile demurely. Even the firemen who are present by law at all major representations wore for that night their parade uniform which is a throw back to the 19th century, with great helmet and cape lined in red silk.
The crowd was also something to behold, it had a distinctive flair of a Fellini movies, remember Edmea Tetua. The crowd was not young, Lots of politicians with medals, bankers with medals, aged famous actors of years ago with medals, designers, and of course Italian aristocracy and Knights of Malta. All dressed up in formal wear, more furs, more jewellery, lots of big diamonds and everyone with a blackberry, that you do not turn off. No one was there to listen and see the opera, no this is a social evening, were la bella figura is important, you are there to be seen.

The crowd took forever to sit down and suddenly in this organized chaos, the first bars of the Italian National Anthem, the crowd stands up as one and turns towards the Royal Box, looking up, way up to the President of the Republic and next to him the mayor of Rome who is also the Superintendent of the Opera House. There is something very strange in this old theater, inscriptions to the King of Italy and to the Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini and this Royal Box with the Coat of Arms of the Royal House of Savoy who were voted out of office in 1946 and in it standing there the President of the Italian Republic. Is it a Republic or a Kingdom?
While the anthem was playing, I noticed that most people did not know the words beyond the first two, so most hum along.
Behind us in a box Franco Zeffirelli with his young attendant and Carla Fracci who heads the corps de ballet of the Opera and in deep mauve an elderly actress, once famous, Valentina Cortese, she played in movies by Vittorio de Sica. There was an endless parade of people paying their respects to him. In front of us paparazzi shooting with powerful flash hundreds of photos, we were sitting in between. Beside us an Italian Princess with a fortune in diamonds on her arms. Frankly looking around us the theatre and this evening had a surreal quality. If someone had told me that Nora Desmond and Cecil B. De Mille were present I would have believed them.

It was not a great production, in fact it had all the quality of reheated leftovers slightly mouldy. At the intermission, there was free champagne and chocolates offered by Hotel de Russie, the most expensive premier hotel in Rome, a famous jeweller was also displaying in the foyer different pieces, there was an exhibit of a few Calder modules. All this to give the impression of exclusivity. We could have been in 1950 it was Rome, it was la Dolce Vita.

At the end of the show, we left quickly, while the crowd applauded and cheered Zeffirelli, I do not think it was deserved at all, this was after all a production he had created some 45 years ago, nothing new and it looked cruder. A very disappointing evening all together, but also great human theater, as Falstaff says the world is a stage and we are all actors and clowns. Hopefully the rest of the season will be better.