Follow my umbrella
Mum and Dad have gone home. We had a brilliant and exhausting time. I think it’s fair to say I was a good tour guide! I’m trying to think of what we didn’t visit, and all I can come up with is the Sex Machine museum and the inside of that crap looking club that spoils the view of Charles Bridge! In eight days I think I managed to show them absolutely everything, including the bones church in Kutná Hora, and Don Giovanni in the theatre where it premiered.
My personal favourite thing? Hard to say. Cakes in the Café Savoy have to been seen to be believed, as does the stunning interior of the place. We went to evening mass at this church and it was incredible. We’re not catholic, but the atmosphere was unbeatable. The cantor and the priest sounded so beautiful singing the mass which was made even more mysterious by the beauty of the Czech language - their voices floated up and up into that endless accoustic.
Sad to see Mum and Dad go, but glad they came for a long stay. (Their hotel had a bath, which they let me use!) I was doing ok in the airport until my dad kissed me goodbye and I felt his tears on my cheek. I ran off to get the bus, but then their flight was delayed by several hours and I felt bad because I could have stayed with them.
Incidentally, there’s a Puccini fest on in the Prague State Opera, just before I leave! Think I’ll be popping down there for either Tosca or Manon Lescaut before I go off to Poland. Madame B really doesn’t float my boat, and I’ve already seen Turandot with Jez. They were broadcasting the Covent Garden performance over a big screen in Manchester last July. The opera was brilliant of course, but mainly it was wonderful just being in the middle of one of my favourite cities in the middle of summer, smooching away to free opera, eating the gingerbread men I’d decorated to look like us, and laughing at the tramps who were managing to sleep through Ben Heppner’s tremendous Nessun Dorma - oh yes they will!
I had been singing with English National Opera a few days previously to this, and whist in London, my friend Vivien and I had gone around of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Not content with the guided tour, Vivien sneaked into the auditorium to watch a dress rehearsal of Turandot, and later on almost fainted from excitement when she caught sight of Ben Heppner himself through the canteen window! I just couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the mattress they’d positioned behind the Tosca scenery. I don’t know why it was funny, but it was. A good tour by the way, I’d recommend it.
Now I’m off to buy a train ticket to go to Pilsen tomorrow, yes, the Pilsen of Pilsner Urquell fame. Sadly I won’t be touring the brewery, I’ll be looking around a medical library. But it should be a nice day.
I’ll just finish this post by saying I was very touched by the comments you left on my last post. Stay in touch!
Despina.
