You might have been wondering why there was no blog activity these past few days. Actually, I'm off for most of this and a bit of next week taking a little break, just interrupted by two crazily busy days in the office yesterday and today. Now, I'm just on my way to the Faculty of Music at U of T for my annual audition with the students of the Opera School (which, of course, is run by the wonderful Sandra Horst, COC Chorus Master in her second life). Last week, I went to see their production of Don Giovanni. There were quite a few interesting voices and I look forward to hearing these young artists again.

When I return to my March break tomorrow I hope the weather will return to the gorgeous promise of spring we had at the beginning of the week.

Next week, we will already start rehearsals for La Cenerentola, the first opera of our spring season. And I'll be busy travelling again.

On Friday and Saturday, we ended our winter season with two beautiful performances of Magic Flute and Nixon in China. I'm proud that we were able to add Nixon to our repertoire and bring Flute back after a very long absence, both true milestones in the history of opera in their very own way. Thank you to all our wonderful artists who have made this winter season so special.

Today was a big travel day and hopefully by this evening all company members participating in taking our production of The Nightingale and Other Short Fables to the Brooklyn Academy of Music will have arrived in New York safely. If your follow the other COC blog Parlando you will know that we've been busy with the technical setup at BAM for the past few days. Now, only one more day of rehearsals with the full cast, chorus and orchestra separates us from the opening on Tuesday.

And on top of all, the weather here in New York is quite a bit more clement than at home in Toronto. No more snow!

We're just about to finish a series of four Magic Flutes in four days, the dress rehearsal for our Ensemble Studio performance on Tuesday, the Ensemble Studio performance on Thursday and two performances of the main cast on Wednesday and tonight. Tonight also is Isabel Bayrakdarian's and Michael Schade's last performance. Simone Osborne and Frédéric Antoun will take over for the remaining three performances.

It was truly amazing to have two accomplished artists as Isabel and Michael in our production, but I am also very proud of the members of our Ensemble Studio. Their performance yesterday was more than a fulfilled promise, it put them on the map as a group of artists to watch out for. Bravi!