The hills are alive...

OK, it's pretty corny, but it's true. The hills are alive...with the sound of music.

I've forsaken the desert for a few weeks in Salzburg. We're doing a revival of last summer's production in Aix-en-Provence of Mozart's Idomeneo. The orchestra is being housed in some out-of-the-way hotel near the airport. That didn't sound terribly tempting to me, so I found a little guest house. It's also out of the way, but there's a direct bus into town and I have a nice view.

My view of the Zeppezauerhaus on the Untersberg.

It's been a bit boring to re-rehearse, but there's one new cast member and a different hall to get used to, so it's necessary. We will also do concert performances in France at the beginning of February and some of the singers will change.

The production is very modern. The set is an enormous scaffolding-like contraption with stairs and bleachers and enormous horses. It spins around and is reformed in endless ways.

The set behind a sheer screen.

 We have fabulous singers. My favorite is, of course, Richard Croft.

Richard Croft (with the knife) flanked by Luca Tittoto, Yann Beuron, Colin Balzar

I've been doing productions with Richard since 2002 and he calls me "forest-dwelling mushroom girl." Must be something about the hair. His fiance is an old friend of mine from summer festival days in Oregon. It's a nice coincidence and means we get to see each other just about every year. If you haven't heard Richard sing, you need to!!

 Another view of the stage from the pit with Richard below and Mireille Delunsch in the middle. 

Sorry for the photo quality. It's not so easy to take photos without flash from the pit without being too obtrusive, not to mention while trying to avoid missing any entrances at the same time. :-)

A Wedding and a Match

A few days ago, I had a gig. A wedding gig. I probably haven't played a wedding gig since 1995 and while I was in university, weddings were my bread and butter. Yes, there have been weddings to play for since, but only as a favor for personal friends and/or family.

I had only been called a few days earlier and I was given the violin part of Rachmaninov's Vocalise by a colleague who couldn't play because there was a QPO concert that night. I was to play along with a CD.

Earlier in the day, the bride's cousin called me to tell me I should come directly to the bride's suite. I arrived at the Sheraton Hotel quite early. One never knows what the traffic will be like here in Doha. I knocked on the door and entered a small suite with half a dozen Qatari girls having their make-up and hair done. I thought I would die of hairspray inhalation.

This is the first time I've actually seen a Qatari woman without an abaya. Here in Qatar, the native women usually wear a black cloak with a black head scarf. The young ones often don't cover their faces, but many woman either wear a veil over their head covering, thus covering their faces, or they cover everything but their eyes.

I assume the girls who were being made up were sisters and cousins of the bride. I was told to sit down on a couch and wait. I pulled out a magazine and settled in. A while later, one of the girls put a CD in the player and I was told I could practice. It turned out I would be "bow-sinking". At the end of the piece there was even a radio-like fade-out to other music which meant I couldn't even play to the last note of the piece.

My little rehearsal done, I saw back down to wait it out. One by one, the girls left to go down to the party in one of the large hotel banquet rooms. Most of them were wearing elegant evening gowns. One was even wearing a short gown with a long stiff polka-dot train.

Eventually it was just me, the bride, the photographer and the videographer. The bride was getting more and more nervous by the second, but she was still able to pose beautifully for the photographer. Sadly, I wasn't allowed to take photos. Then the photographer began to talk about marriage. She switched from speaking Arabic to speaking English and we must have scared the poor bride to death when we both agreed that no matter what you think about marriage, it will be different from what you expect. The photographer was telling her all about how she would lose her privacy and freedom.

Apparently the family was fairly open-minded, because the bride told me she actually knows her groom, who is her cousin. Normally the bride has only seen pictures. I asked how the family decides. She said it is always a cousin. Scary.

The bride was wearing a normal western white wedding dress, but they covered her with a black shawl so she could make her way down to the banquet room without being seen by any men. I noticed with horror that the price tag was still on the shawl. I called it to the attention of one of her relatives following behind who asked with a twinkle in her eye, "How much does she cost?"

I entered the banquet room where the music was blaring so loud that it was no problem to warm up. I could hardly hear myself. When it was nearing time to play, I set up my stand on a cat-walk and tried to look around without being too obvious. I was suprised to see lots of cleavage, chubby little girls in evening gowns as well as some older woman in burqas (at least I think they were older - it was hard to tell). I waited for my cue which consisted of a short period of yelling that sounded like yodeling on fast forward and then came the Rachmaninov. I played my heart out, but the music was so loud, I could hardly hear myself. The poor bride had to enter the room through a white velvet curtain and walk slowly towards the catwalk on camera and followed by a spotlight. She stopped next to me and waited for the Rachmaninov to end. Poor girl. The piece is more than seven minutes long. Both repeats!! She tried her best to remain poised, but there was terror behind that smile. I tried to calm her by smiling encouragingly as she walked towards me.

When I was finished, I tried to leave gracefully and as I packed, I watched the corner screen. It looked as if the women of the family were showering her with papers and screaming and dancing around her. I'm not sure what happened after that, but I think I will send the bride a text message one of these days to see how she is. It was only after I left the room that I realized there wasn't a single man in there. I guess they had their own party.


-----


Two days ago we had a chance to go see the Federer play Davydenko in the men's semi-finals of the Qatar Open. I've never been to a tennis tournament, but it seemed to me that it was a pretty exciting game.We were high up, but almost in the center and it was no problem to see well. It's a great stadium.

This is Federer.

And here are the VIPs, including the Emir of Qatar.

Federer lost. Poor guy!

Tigger is here!!

Several weeks ago, I wrote about our quest for a car. You're probably wondering if there was ever an end to that story.

We spent several days looking at a number of new and used vehicles.The antepenultimate (my new word) test drive was a slightly used VW Tiguan which we liked lots. The penultimate was an older Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was SO bad that we immediately went back and put down a deposit on the Tiguan.

THEN, just for fun (that's what they all say) we decided to go over to the VW dealership with new cars. There we drove a fully loaded floor model of a 2010 Tiguan - panoramic sun-roof, leather seats, seat heaters, integrated GPS. It turned out that a whole shipment was on a boat and would arrive in Doha in early January. We could have our choice of colors and upholstery and, if we didn't go for the fully loaded version, it would almost be the same price as the used one once we factored in a special subsidy provided by the Qatar Foundation. Couple that with the very low price of cars here (probably mostly because there's no sales tax) and this will probably be the only time in our lives we will ever be able to afford a new car of this extraordinary quality. One of the deal-making elements was that extra year of warranty. The 2009 used model, of course, was already more than a year into its warranty. Plus, it had various minor blemishes! In a flurry, we ran back to the used car dealership, got our deposit back and brought it to the new car dealership.

The result of our decision is a gorgeous blue Tiguan we've named Tigger.

We've been having such a lousy time, that at least this is one bright spot. Erik commented that it is the first time he has ever seen me truly smile about something here.

Now for the specs...

• 2.0 liters, 200 hp, 4 cylinders
  
• 4MOTION four-wheel drive
• 17-inch alloy wheels
• 2.5 ton towing capacity
• 18-degree angle off road
  
• 470 to 1510 liters of loading volume

And of course, the most important features... ;-)

• Biscay Blue Pearl Effect
• Blue/black interior
• Lots of cup-holders
• Touch-screen stereo with parking sensor diagram and 6 CD changer
  

This thing even parallel parks all by itself!! Seriously!!!

Look at that clean engine...

And we're off!

What we miss, Part I: Sweden

Being expatriates most of our lives, we are often asked the question, "What do you most miss from home?" It's not always easy to answer. First of all, we have both lived in so many places that we are often confused about where home actually is. Secondly, we are not even sure what people actually mean by home. Current home? Birthplace? Where we've lived the most? It's all very complicated.

I'm going to try to answer one very small part of that question. Erik's Heimat (we'll talk about that concept another time) is Sweden. In 2009, I actually spent more time there than he did, having had a concert tour there in April. I was there a grand total of 5 times. So, what do we - mostly Erik, but more and more me as well - miss from (not about) Sweden?

Food! We came home with half a suitcase full of favorite items. Back row, left to right: Lingonberry preserves, 2 organic cheeses from the Alps which Erik's sister imports to Sweden, organic Dinkelmehl (spelt flour), marzipan cake topper and mandelmassa (almond mass, more or less like marzipan), Swedish coffee, flat bread (which actually comes from Norway), powdered blueberry and cloudberry soup, pearl sugar for baking. Front row: two types of Knäckebrot, reindeer meat and three jars of organic preserves, including one with cloudberries.

Erik is very allergic to wheat and I don't tolerate lactose very well. Swedish grocery stores have so many alternatives for us both. I wish I had taken a picture of the dairy section alone. There is lactose-free milk, yogurt, butter, whipping cream, sour cream, buttermilk and probably lots of other items I'm forgetting. For Erik, although it is still hard to find bread that is wheat-free, there are plenty of dry bread alternatives. We like that stuff better anyway. Crunchy.

Here's hoping we land back in Sweden one of these days. The eatin' is good!

Godt Nytt År!!

First of all, we'd like to wish all our family and dear friends a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We spent New Year's Eve in Malmö with Erik's sister and her family. Erik cooked a wonderful pork roast - our last chance to eat pork for a while. I made blueberry pie. Five minutes before midnight found us out on the street watching the fireworks. Since Malmö is on the ocean, there were lots of glowing emergency boat flares floating down from the sky on parachutes. At the stroke of midnight, the cork popped and we enjoyed a nice bottle of champagne.


It would have been so nice to sleep in on New Year's Day, but we had to board a cramped Turkish Airlines flight to Doha. We stopped in Istanbul where we ran into several more orchestra members who were on the next flight with us. We weren't aware that our second flight was going to stop in Bahrain to let some people off and even more on. When we landed in Doha, many people stayed on the airplane. I'm guessing that the plane was returning to Istanbul with the Bahrain passengers and probably some from Doha as well. T.A. is so uncomfortable and inconvenient that we have vowed to try to avoid it in future if at all possible. However, all of the bother was almost worth it when we came across this sign in Istanbul...

I'm pretty sure I had a few "Antigue Hems" on my person, but they didn't originate in Turkey, so I don't think there was any danger of arrest.

And now, a beautiful last look at Sweden. We already miss being there.