In His Own Words

Alexander Neef, General Director


12/7/2009

Monday in Montreal

My BlackBerry let me down this morning. Even though I had set the alarm it didn't sound and for the first time ever I missed a flight.

Luckily, I live close enough to the Island Airport, could rush there within half an hour for the next flight to Montreal and I made it for my lunch in the city with only a five-minute delay.


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12/4/2009

Our Long-Term Future

Today, we had a long meeting of our Long-Term Funding Committee, a group of Board members who help us develop strategies to secure that our artistic plans have the necessary financial foundation.

Not only, but especially, in these challenging economic times it is very important to maintain the COC's capacity to produce new works and new productions of existing operas.

Over the years, the COC has built an international reputation for performing unusual repertoire extremely well. The Nightingale and Other Short Fables is just the latest example. But we also need to build new productions of the most important pieces of the standard repertoire, i.e. the 10 to 15 most popular operas by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and a few other composers.


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7/22/2009

Between Timezones

After having been in Europe for quite a long period I suffer from really serious jetlag. For the second day already I woke up at three in the morning, which in London would be 8 a.m. and perfect to get up. However, I am in Toronto, so I wait until it is time to go to the office and then I start getting tired again in the early evening. The confusion my body is in will be complete when I travel to the west coast on Friday with a time difference of minus three hours. Then I will return to Toronto for a few days, only to leave again, this time for Santa Fe, with a time difference of minus two hours. Luckily, I have no further travel plans until late September after that and really look forward to settling into one time zone in August.


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Posted by Alexander Neef / in Planning / comments (1) / permalink