Zu dir wall' ich

On short notice, I must announce a long-planned, but still insufficiently prepared-for interruption in the torrent of opera-obsessed posting here. The reason is an exciting and terrifying one. I am leaving tomorrow to walk 300 miles (480 km) in about three weeks, on the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. After that, my flatmate (faithful companion in opera-going, among other things) and I are planning to spend a little less than two weeks taking advantage of having paid for airplane tickets to our ancestral continent. Nebulous plans include Rome (hopefully with Massenet's Manon!) and Paris. Of course, the stress of writing papers and going to an enormous, exhausting academic conference has kept us from booking any sort of accommodation. So we will have adventures! and presuming I'm still in one piece, things should pick up again here in late June.


This hiatus seems to me a good opportunity to consider further directions for the blog, so here are a few questions for you, Dear Readers. Mir ist aufgefallen, dass zwanzig Prozent der Leserschaft dieses Blogs deutschsprachig sein soll! Toll! Ich freue mich sehr über Eure Besuche. Nun, wenn ich deutsche Verfassungen meiner Posts machen sollte, gibt es besondere Themen bzw. Sänger/innen worüber ihr besonders gern lesen würdet? Ich nehme an, zukünftige--und vielleicht schon existierende?--Rezensionen von den Leistungen Jonas Kaufmanns sollten auf jeden Fall zweisprachig verfasst werden (ist mir auch recht, so darf ich mir noch mehr Zeit nehmen, darüber nachzudenken,) aber was gibt es noch? Es ist mir bewusst, dass Übersetzungen nur nützlich wären, wenn mein schriftliches deutsch überhaupt lesbar ist... hm. Wenn nicht, ich bitte um Entschuldigung... Vorschläge sind auch willkommen. Dear Anglophones, and everyone else, whose languages I apologize for speaking less fluently or not at all, you are, as always, welcome too! Any suggestions for adding panache to this amateur endeavor will be gladly taken. Suggestions for what in the world I am going to do with myself over the opera-starved summer will also be eagerly received! Right now I am contemplating deliciously irresponsible quantities of opera DVDs from the NYPL.

Zum Schluss, I leave you all with what I believe to be the only version on YouTube of the "other" pilgrims' chorus. Why not "Beglückt darf dich"? Well, I was tempted. But it does feel a bit like cheating to write about greeting the homeland before all the "Müh und Plage." And also, I believe all those "Allelujas" are best heard at full volume, as my neighbors probably (too) well know. Oh well, for a month the amateur DJ who lives downstairs can play the music which translates to my apartment as thumping and swear words without fear of Wagnerian retaliation, while I purify my heart of vengeful thoughts towards him (maybe.)