5C's Que Pasa

Last Saturday, Opera Kelowna had its fourth full opera performance.  Opera is young here in our small city but  so very well received.  They now have one full performance per year.  I only discovered the Kelowna Opera society last year and we attended The Magic Flute last year.  This year they moved to a larger venue ( the largest that we have,  853 seats ) and were sold out both performances. The opera was La boheme by Puccini.  We had excellent seats and I must say that for Kelowna theater they were well priced.  I am overjoyed that we were able to get tickets.

It was a fairly large set.  So difficult to take photos while trying not to disturb the other patrons.  As you can see on the upper right there was a rather large screen translating the words being sung into English.  There was one also to my left.

I really found the screen distracting as it was so large.  At the Met in New York, they have tiny screens on the back of the seat in front of you which is easily ignored.  My eye did wander from time to time to the screen which distracted me from the music.  I will say that the words were not true to the original as written by Puccini.

This particular performance had been set in the 1920’s rather than the normal 1860’s.  That is Musetta center stage in flapper style dress complete with headband.  Mimi is the first female on the right sitting at the table.  They were both exquisite vocally.

The final scene just before Mimi dies.

I have a special friend who has seen as many La bohemes  as I have.  She told me that if I cried at the end then it was indeed a great performance.  Well my dear amiga, I teared up but did not have tears falling done my cheeks.  It was very emotional and as I said I had tears.  However I do believe that the opera experience we had in Venice may have spoiled me for the rest of life.  I mean who has such an up close and personal experience.

We loved the performance and when I read that that next August the opera was going to be Carmen I was overwhelmed.  That is my most favorite of them all.  Why?  Because my mother was in it and I had a small part in the children’s chorus.  I know every word of that opera.  Even better it is in French, my first language.  Be still my beating heart.  If they have 2 or 3 performances I will be at each, front and center.

Saturday knocked me back to reality.  I had to pick up just a very few things at Walmart, eggs and cheese. This fellow hanging out his laundry in the parking lot soon brought me back to reality. Seriously?

What is special about the previous photo is that I did not have my camera with me but I did have my iPhone.  So I was able to take the photo.  However selecting the photo and emailing it to myself and then transferring it to iPhoto and touching it up a bit was a chore.  Note to self, always carry your regular camera.  I think that my camera would have done a better job.

Also on Saturday I had to hit our only large mall to make a return on one of our personal travel items.  We are now happy with our selections.  As I was walking the length of the mall I noticed a shoe store.  I have had serious left heel issues the last few days  and realized that I may need to change my footwear.  My over 10K per day ( today is day 40 ) is taking a toll on my feet.

So I tried these on and although I do not like the look of them they are very soft, cushioned and comfortable.  However the right foot is not quite right on the arch so I will wear them inside for a few weeks before I decide to keep them or return them.

Well this is a first in our lives.  Side by side charging of our phones.

We have had a busy few days.  Stay tuned for an early post Tuesday as we make our next move.  Yes that reads  m o v e .

We had planned to do the traditional 40 minute gondola ride despite the high cost but it just didn’t appeal to either of us.  There was boat after boat after boat and it just seemed so very commercial and certainly not romantic.  Even before we left Canada for Venice, as we watched this webcam,  which is on the same canal as and just before the Bridge of Sighs, we began to wonder if it was the right thing for us.

Gondoliers are easily found in Venice and some areas seem to be overrun with them.

One day as we were searching for the location of the building I will talk about in this post, we saw bumper to bumper gondolas.  Most were mere inches from each other.  In fact we did see two collide on two separate occasions.  We stood in this spot for about 15 minutes and decided that it was not for us.  Seriously, it reminded us of a Disney ride.  Not worth the 80 – 100 euros for 40 minutes.  It wasn’t the cost, we would have willingly paid it, but the portrayed experience was dismal and not what one reads about in all the Venice travel information.

This was taken the day prior and at an earlier time of day, the gondolas were lining up, bumper to bumper.  I do have to say that it was a great location to watch and listen as almost every third boat had an accordion player and a singer.  A great location to just stop and watch the parade and listen to the music.  Good thing we came the day ahead as it was 6 or 7 different bridges with some odd back and forth to find the place….um the palace.

The white building on the left is called the Palazzo ( or Palace ) Barbarigo Minotto and is owned by a Countess or a Contessa, a title of Italian nobility used in Italy.  This particular Contessa lives in another Palazzo in Venice and rents this home out.  Sadly this one is slowly sinking into the Grand Canal.

At the moment the Musica @ Palazzo is occupying this palace…. www.dictionary.com/browse/palazzo1. an impressive public building or private residence; palace. Origin of palazzo. < Italian: literally, palace.  Per Wikipedia……..

…..Musica a Palazzo is a cultural association of classical musicians who, since 2005, have produced opera performances staged in the Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto, a Venetian Gothic palace facing the Grand Canal. The piano nobile of the palace, with its backdrop of frescoes by Tiepolo and sculptures by Carpoforo Tencalla, is its main performing space.^[1] The performing style follows the 19th-century Italian practice of “Salotto Musicale” (Musical Salon). The operas are performed without a stage, with the audience becoming part of the scene.^[2][3]

The program alternates famous operas, such as Verdi’s La traviata and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville,^[4] with Duetti d’amore, a selection of love duets from La bohème, Tosca, Don Giovanni, Rigoletto and other popular operas.

When I had checked the Trip Advisor top ten and the operas came up, it was a given.  We actually booked the opera and the date before we left Kelowna.  The price was of no matter to me as this was a primary and most important thing to do in Venice, at least for me.  I love opera and my Mom had sung with the Edmonton Opera Association and I had attended umpteen performances growing up and long thereafter and still do and had even sung in the children’s chorus in Carmen.  The cost to see this opera in Venice, actually the word is to experience this opera, is 85 euros each.  Well worth every penny.

We ( actually I ) had chosen to see La Traviata.  Sorry but I could not get this to come up in a link.  The above depicts the opera we saw and how it was performed in three different rooms of the Palazzo.  I love how this opera was first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in 1853 which was only two blocks/alleys away from our apartment and we passed it each day.

Ready for our very special evening, dressed in pearls, diamonds and rhinestones.  The Palazzo is just behind us, where the two tiny yellow lights are.

The scene of the first act.  Guests are seated wherever they can find a chair.  If you come early as we did you can actually be a part of the act.  To the extreme right of the photo next to and just above the candelabra ( real candles by the way ) is a mirror in which Violetta looks at herself and sings about how pale she looks.  I was sitting right next to the table that the mirror is positioned above.  Of course we had no idea how close to the action that we would be.  The floor was decidedly slopping to the right of the room and if you look closely you might detect that the ceiling it tilting very much to the right.  The door to the left did not close properly and hung at an angle.  We did feel like we were sloping as we sat in our chairs.  No wonder the  Italian Contessa moved to another home and is renting this one out.

There are no photos allowed during the performance.  This was not a proper full first act but mostly the arias with minimal props.  It was truly lovely having the female lead soprano and the male lead tenor directly in front of you.  You could not help but be caught up in the moment of the music, their voices and the fact that they were just a few feet away from you.  Something you never experience in a real theater.  It was mesmerizing to say the least.  Then Violetta came to the mirror and sang her heart out as she saw her pallor and wondered if she was ill.  Of course I knew the story and somehow I seemed to understand the words as she sang them, mere inches away from me.  If I had moved I would have touched her gown.  Pure enjoyment.  Then Violetta decides to throw her sorrows to the side and the tempo and her voice pick up as she pours champagne into about 6  or 7 glasses.  She then begins to distribute the champagne, all the while singing, to the audience.  She gave me her third glass. I was overwhelmed.  She then held up her glass, looked at me and offered a toast, I toasted her back and so ended the first act. So very very emotional as I knew that she was faking her happiness for the benefit of her guests attending the ball in that first act.  I was speechless and close to tears.

Intermission was in yet another room of the palace but we we too emotional to take photos.  Champagne was being offered to everyone.  I had not one but two more small glasses in addition to my very very special first glass.  I was floating and totally happy with the evening. There was no way it could get better.

The second act was in yet another wonderful room. We were late to to enter and sat in the second row.  This was good as I could better listen to the voices, observe the drama, acting and facial expressions, not to mention the singing and the overall interaction of the singers.  In this act Alfredo’s father, Giorgio, ( baritone ) was added to the scene.  As I had written earlier I have attended many operas and a few La Traviatas.  I have to say that this Violetta was the very best ever.  I was beyond impressed.  This particular scene was so emotional  with tears running down her cheeks.  You could see the raw emotion that she was experiencing as she sung.  And then the savage end to the act  as Alfredo flung his gambling earnings at her feet as he humiliates and denounces her in front of her guests…us in the audience.  I think that anyone who had never attended an opera before could not help but be moved.  Totally heart – stirring.

The third act takes place in Violetta’s bedroom where she dies at the end of the story.  What is amazing is that we are in an actual bedroom in a Palazzo on the Grand Canal.  We were seated in the front row in the two seats just above the word ‘where’ in the first sentence.  It is not easy to see but the walls here did not meet the ceiling.  This Palazzo is sadly doomed unless a great deal of money is infused into the property.

I won’t go into a great deal of detail as to the story line but suffice to day that Violetta is ill and gets in and out of bed and collapses here and there, all  the while singing her heart out.  At one point she gets up from the floor and…from the internet…

Dr. Grenvil tells Annina that Violetta will not live long since her tuberculosis has worsened. Alone in her room, Violetta reads a letter from Alfredo’s father telling her that the Baron was only wounded in his duel with Alfredo; that he has informed Alfredo of the sacrifice she has made for him and his sister; and that he is sending his son to see her as quickly as possible to ask for her forgiveness. But Violetta senses it is too late (Violetta: Addio, del passato bei sogni ridenti – “Farewell, lovely, happy dreams of the past”).

So as she sings this farewell aria, Violetta is acting and moving about…..suddenly she comes and stands before me and grasps my hands from my lap and holds them up between us as she sings, impeaching in my mind for me to understand her loss and how very alone she is.  She sings for a minute or two or three with my hands clasped in hers……as she starts to move away, with her eyes and her hands she implores me to help her.  At that moment there is no one in the room but her and I.  I am stricken that I can’t help her……so very very slowly she slips her hands away from me ( which are held mid air between us ) all the while imploring me to help her.  I keep holding my hands out to her as she backs away…..I am in the moment, a part of the act.

Shortly thereafter the act ends. Tears are streaming down my face.  I have a severe pain in my heart.  My mind flits to my mother and back to the moment.

I am in Venice.  Magic has happened.  I can’t stop crying.  In fact as other audience members come up to say how fortunate I was or to congratulate me all I could do was cry on their shoulder.  It took me a few hours before I settled down.  I told that Colin that I could die happy.  Now that was a magical evening.

This Canadian Contessa was more then impressed to have been a part of this enchanted evening in a Palazzo owned by the Italian Contessa.

We woke up to a surprise Saturday morning.  Snow up there on September 28th, certainly a rarity and likely a first for the time of year.

The cool weather stayed with us all weekend. Then the night of the 30th, it went down to -3C/26F!

We had our final salmon BBQ this year in those temperatures. It was the only night that Colin wasn’t working. Yes that is a huge piece of fish but it was the smallest that we could find.

We picked these tomatoes two days before it got so cold.  We picked up that colourful glass in Morano ( Venice ), Italy just two years ago.

Monday, September 30th, a new park home was delivered to friends on our street. The home had to make two turns. This was the first and we had to move our cars and the golf cart. Someone else ended up parking their cart on our lot as they got caught on the street.

The last turn was the tightest.  That white open area will have an add a room added to it on site.

That night before the frost we went and picked a bag of beets tops, the rest of the Swiss chard and the kale.  This is an entire new batch of tomatoes separate from the ones in the photo above.  We left many many more tomatoes on the vines.  I can’t believe how well our tomatoes have been doing.  I still have dozens of new bight yellow flowers on the plants.  Hopefully some of these greens ones will ripen.  We haven’t been back to the garden since Monday night so I have no idea if anything survived the frost.  We still have beets and carrots in the ground.

Colin is working towards his final deadline with photography but the weather is not cooperating.  Meanwhile I sit at my desk working on my Mexico lists as well as trying to wrap up the business as best I can until April.

Oops!! I must have bumped the small server table that we have our wine glasses on and this glass ( just a cheap one ) fell off. Had it been one of our better glasses there would have been hundreds of shattered pieces.

The next morning, October 1st and -3C.  Not a pretty sight.  Glad that we did not have to be out there scrapping our car windows.

There was a mist on the lake.  Can you see the bit of colour from the sunrise.

We had to go into Kelowna for a meeting. Such a change in the colour of the trees.  I wore my open toe shoes but with a pair of socks as well as a fleece shawl over my sweater.

We are ever so slowly starting to load things into the RV.  Looks like at least four guitars will be making the trip to Mexico.  Just the cases have made it to the RV thus far.  Colin is still playing at the end of every workday, which is why we often don’t eat until 9PM or later. However I am also working late. Tonight I am writing this post at 8:15PM.

We were very surprised to see this fellow out on the lake just before sunset, about 6:15PM.  It was 50F/10C with a breeze as you can see.  Very cool but he appeared to be dressed for the weather complete with a toque over his ears and gloves on his hands.

Our local online news station does a poll every now and then.  I was very surprised to see the results.  Only 27 have voted thus far.  Looking forward to seeing the results when we get into the thousands.  Do you get a flu shot?  We never have.

Up to 821 so very quickly.  This will be interesting.  I have always been against inoculating a bad substance into your body.

Thanks for sticking with me so far.  So happy to have you along reading my blog

The day started with Ismael having time to work in my garden.  This is just half of all the palm trees roots that he removed.  They are very invasive and choke the life out of other plants.

He did a great job of clearing this flower bed and replanting it.  Note that the wheelbarrow has even more roots now.  I pretty much replaced all the plants in this part of my garden.  The wind and salt air are hard on the flowers.

Once the plants were done we got back to painting. This time it was the patio.  Sadly the long stick handle broke  as I was putting my everything  into it.  So I simply bent over and used the short end to keep painting.  You can see the difference in the color of yellows.  Loews no longer had that critical yellow color number that we used for the patio color last year.  So now we have a much brighter sunny yellow color.

When I got tired Colin took over.

The best part of Friday was heading to the opera Carmen at the Angela Peralta Theater.  Colin is hanging out with a few gypsies while I was in the bano.

I have seen this opera several tines including once at the Met in New York.  My mother had sung in the chorus of this opera and once I was in the childrens chorus as depicted in the middle left of the photo above.

Act 2, the tavern scene.  Every act was very well done.

Here Don Jose is telling Carmen that he can’t live without her but she denies her love for him as she loves another.  Shortly thereafter he kills her.

It was a great performance.  However it was long, it took 3.5 hours to get to the curtain calls.

We were very tired by the tine we got back home to the RV,  but oh so very inspired by the wonderful evening we had just enjoyed.  One of our best nights out since the opera in Venice.

…….because we would have blown it.  As my regular readers know the trip to Venice was a means to help us change our thinking after losing our two special girls.  We just went for it with not much real planning.  Of course being evacuated due to flooding just before we left didn’t help either.  We had a wonderful time and didn’t worry about the money once we got there ( well once I stopped trying to convert Euros to Canadian dollars ).  Some of you are interested in how much it all cost.  Because we were only away for a week it was expensive mostly due to the airfare.  Had we stayed away longer it would have averaged out.  We don’t regret what we spent as it was our first trip without dogs in over twenty years and it reignited that spark to travel abroad.  We only started RVing because of the dogs.  We were used to traveling several times per year  all over the world and having dogs curtailed that.  The RV opened up an entire new world to us.  We love our RV and will continue traveling to the Isla every year as well as other destinations but we will add some trips within Mexico by car ( the new Jeep ) and at least one, perhaps two or three trips by air the rest of the year.  I retire next May when I turn 65 and Colin is willing to semi retire, only time will tell how that works out 😐   However his love of traveling may help dictate that path.

A selfie in St. Mark’s Square.

The airfare from Kelowna to Toronto and then onto Venice and return on Air Rouge was $2513.42 CAD.  As it was a long flight we splurged and paid for seat selection on each leg for an additional $520.00CAD.  We thought that it was worth the money and will do it again.  I had originally booked us into a hotel but shortly before we left I booked into Airbnb ( $1307.00 CAD for six nights ) the switch to that saved us $533.00CAD.  It was wonderful having a huge entire apartment to ourselves.  The first few nights I was very restless due to jet lag and Colin just moved to the living room and slept on the sofa.  Health insurance for the week was only $59.00.

On our last day walking thru the Accademia district we came upon this car which had been converted to a floating vessel of sorts.  The fellow had certainly traveled a long distance , about 400 KM.  it looked like it was held together with duck tape.

All of our transportation including from the airport to Venice return, the seven day transportation pass, the museum pass, the skip the line St. Mark’s Bell Tower ticket and the skip the line added to our Doges Palace museum pass,  as well as the expensive opera tickets ( 170 euro ) cost us about 471 euros or $745.00 CAD.  But having saved that $533.00 CAD by using an Airbnb we were only out $212.00 CAD.

The following video was also taken while walking through the Accademia district.  He is phenomenal.  Well worth a few moments of your time.

Food both for breakfasts at the apartment and for lunches and dinners out and the occasional gelato and spritz and wine as desired as well as bottled water came to $1017.80CAD for both of us.  That works out to $145.00CAD per day for the two of us.  I think that is a reasonable cost.  Included in this cost are the ridiculously expensive prices for water  ( 2 small bottles and 1 medium bottle, 2 tiny as in 3 inches wide sandwiches which served as breakfast and then two normal size tuna sandwiches for later on the plane )  which we were forced to pay expensive Venice airport  prices which came to 27.55 Euro/$43.75CAD 😯

We allowed three hours to check in and it took every second of that to get through several sets of security before lining up for yet another final security and passport check.  The airport was on heightened alert because of the London situation but it truly was chaos.  I had read how the Venice airport was a madhouse and so it was.  There is no control, no guidance, just a free for all of hundreds of people trying to get through a narrow security area not once but three times.  Next time we will arrive by train having flown in from another airport within Italy.  I really can’t see myself doing the Venice airport again.

The following are the sounds of bells ringing at noon as we stood at the top of the bell tower on the Friday morning, mentioned in my last Venice post.

We had no intention of buying anything as we have no space for things in our home nor the RV.  However we did end up purchasing my small purse and tiny wallet, the two bracelets, a lace fan in Burano and the three glass balls and the  drinking glass in Murano.   All small things that we could fit into our luggage and at a reasonable price of $216.00CAD.  The grand total comes to $6420.00CAD, not a lot for some, a reasonable amount for others and yet too much for a few.  Europe is expensive and Venice is extremely expensive.  We truly had no idea how much it was going to cost but figured that we could live with whatever it cost.  Life is short and we had a grand time.  So we may go out less this summer but it was worth every penny.  If you really want to know about the details of the flights and our missing our connection in Vancouver let me know.  Looking back I think that the extra night in Vancouver at Air Canada’s expense helped us with our jet lag.  We got home about 1PM the next day, were able to unpack and have a normal day.  We were in bed early, about 8 or 9 PM but we were back to our normal routine the next day, albeit a bit sleepy.  My ankles were swollen for a few days.  Next time I will make more of an effort to walk around during the flight.

Yes there will be a next flight.  We are already working on it.  Where do you think we might go?  Back to Italy, to France or to Spain or perhaps to Iceland?????  Any other suggestions?  Actually we just booked our flight out for next May 😆

We don’t normally do videos but today’s post has a few of them, all special but short 😉   Colin wanted me to end our Venice posts with this last magical video of the ringing bells in St. Mark’s Square after our Viennese Waltz.

We will be back.