Thérèse, Jena, Derniere…
Hi there! This week was really nice and intense. During the last 8 days I sang 6 performances of Thérèse, the last one was last night and today finally came home and I am so tired, my voice is find, it is just the mental tiredness of keeping really focus for the last week to sing well all the performances. All of them went really well and we got very nice moment on stage. It was a really nice journey with this Massenet and the colleagues. I am really grateful for the chance to sing a Armand, a role that my teacher, the late Ryland Davies recorded and also during my studies in Stuttgart the great Francisco Araiza. Both sang really good in these recordings and the interpretation of the Opera are two completely different approaches. The contrast within the two recordings is really interesting and because they are so different it helped me a lot to get nice ideas and really see different colours for the same music.
Hanging in Jena was nice and for the first time in my life I saw how a walnut tree looks like, perhaps I saw it before but really never noticed it. Have you? I can not believe that up until now I eat them daily since like 6 years and only 2 days ago I saw one tree of it and how it grows, and it looks like a small apple and the smell is citrus like. Really surprising for me. Jena is a very youthful city but still not so interesting, I am glad I spent sometime there but 20 days was enough though, however I hope to come again and visit it and maybe sing again in this small festival again. I really enjoyed working with the conductor and stage director, they were very professional and friendly but also strict, so for me was great to work with them.
As you know I love my good coffee, I was surprised there were a lack of them, I mean plenty of coffees and bakeries but not really on specialty coffee. I found however 2 coffee places that I enjoyed mostly because the atmosphere and the nice people attending to them. Those coffees were great for my daily reading and my morning pages.
I kept doing as well my exercise routine of 4 times a week, although always when travelling is really challenging. At home I have my little corner and equipment where I do my exercise and always adapting to a hotel room is not so nice but I already know how to adapt to it. The only lacking is my weights but that is the compromise, so I do more body weight to compensate a bit for the lack of them. Tomorrow Monday the first thing I will do after my morning coffee will be doing my routine with the weights and I look forward to it.
I also prepared already today my luggage because in tow days I will travel if all work well, to Japan for few weeks. This time I had no time to prepare or study Japanese as I have been really busy but I am looking forward to this new adventure and to visit the great country of Japan and see family and friends.
Take care and see you next week.
