Holiday Plans
15 April

Well, Ross and I are beginning to put into place some holiday plans.

It's certainly not going to be anything like on the scale of last year but we hope to have fun.

Our main jaunt is going to be to the Buxton Festival. My parents have given us a little money and so we have upgraded to a slightly grander hotel than we would be accustomed to using - in this case the four star Buxton Palace Hotel. We'll be seeing three operas - Handel's Saul, Thomas's Mignon and Donizetti's Maria di Rohan and I'm also hoping that we are going to get to a few National Trust places like Little Moreton Hall, Quarry Bank Mill and Tatton Park. If we can get there Chatsworth would be another great destination.

As a postlude to this break, Ross and I are returning to the area the following weekend to attend Clonter Opera's performance of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.

We've never attended this venue before. It's summarised as a sort of Cheshire-like Glydebourne without the dress shirts. It's an odd sort of set up with a 400 seat auditorium created from a converted barn and then adjoining bar and dining areas for the 70 minute supper intervals. We are going to take our own food on this first occasion but they do have an option of formal dining with what they are pleased to call ready made canapé baskets.

Another part of the draw for me is that the venue has a reputation for being a springboard for up and coming opera stars and the list of past performers reads like a "Who's Who" of some of the better known names around the British opera scene today. We'll have to see if this bel canto masterpiece lives up to all of this promise and shows us a star in the making.

We've also got a quick trip to London planned so that we can take in the Joan Miró exhibition at Tate Modern. Ross has already ordered the catalogue and I'm looking forward to re-acquainting myself with an artist we both loved when we saw his works in Barcelona back in 1997. There is a bitter sweet nostalgia about this fact as it was during this holiday that Ross first began to feel the effects of his ME.

I'm also getting the chance to go to Opera Holland Park to see Alfredo Catalani's La Wally. It's little done and is mostly known for one big aria - Ebben?... Ne andrò lontana, which you might know if I could hum you the main tune.

We may also manage getting down to see my sister, Linda, in Epsom as her birthday is around that date.

I've also started thinking further ahead about opera plans. The Royal Opera's new season holds absolutely no interest for me whatsoever. This is a blessing as it means that I shall not want to travel down to London for anything. We'll have to hope that ENO follows suit, which on recent evidence is very likely.

Similarly, WNO are having a very quiet season. They bring Don Giovanni to Liverpool in a new production. I think I'll wait until the reviews are out before I take a decision on that. They are taking Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict to Llandudno but it's on a Wednesday night and so it's going to have to take a chance on what my workload as a trainee teacher is like at that stage.

Opera North have not officially announced yet but I have word that they are doing Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in the autumn (and again I'll wait for the reviews before doing anything about that) and then in the spring they are doing Handel's Guilio Cesare and Bellini's Norma which are musts. That's all I know about them that I want to see.

The big draw is going to be the Met's live opera telecasts. If I do nothing else next year, I shall follow Wagner's Ring Cycle to its conclusion. There's also performances of Philip Glass's Satyagraha, Handel's Rodelinda and Gounod's Faust. That's more telecast operas than live performances which is another sign of the times.

Of course, all of these thoughts about future opera attendances are very much dependent on how my future pans out. I may simply not have the time or energy to of any of this if the preparation for being a teacher becomes too much. Or I simply may not be able to afford any of it.

Along with Wagner's Ring Cycle, there is one other investment which I shall have to make. I have to follow Paul Lewis through his complete set of Schubert performances.

After the first concert back in March, expectations were running high for the second Paul Lewis Schubert recital. It did not disappoint.

The 12 Walzes were a pleasant starter with Schubert working out all sorts of melodic ideas in this short pieces of incidental music. The Four Impromptus I know well and they were given an excellent performance here.

The second half began with a Hungarian Melody which I didn't know but which was quite insidious in getting under my skin. The concert ended which an excellent performance of the Piano Sonata No18 in G major.

I know my Schubert mainly through the recordings of Alfred Brendel. He emphasises the modern qualities of the music; he uses the latent chromaticism of the music to look forward to late Romantics such as Mahler and early Schoenberg. He also sees the mystic and other worldliness of the man in the music.

Paul Lewis is a pupil of Brendel's and he has the same clearly throughout approach but he comes from a different angle. Paul Lewis shows us the 18th century in the music, I hear Mozart and early Beethoven. He also shows us an emotional man. There is deeply felt sorrow and anguish in the music but, like Brendel, he does not let the music emote, he lets it observe. There is the same intellectual stance here.

I'm so taken with these performances that I'm feeling more and more that I need to know something of the music before I sit in the audience. Using the power of the internet, I've found Michael Endres's set of recording of Schubert's complete Piano Sonatas. They've had very good reviews and come in a bargain box. I've snapped it up and am enjoying the performances very much and agreeing with critics that, whilst not the finest I'll ever hear (viz Paul Lewis) they are still very good.

You might have thought that that was enough good music for one week.

But no.

Saturday night took Ross and I into central Liverpool to FACT for another of the live telecasts from the Metropolitan opera in New York.

This time it was Comte Ory by Rossini with a truly stellar cast including Diana Damrau (Adele), Juan Diego Florez (Comte Ory)and Joyce DiDonato (Isolier).

Maurizio Bernini was our conductor and Bartlett Sher directed the new production.

When these performances were first mooted a couple of years ago, I thought that it would be the final temptation that would get me to visit New York. I'm glad that I could sit in a comfortable venue in Liverpool and watch the performance live for a fraction of what a transatlantic trip would cost. But it's a thought, isn't it? The Met makes money out of my attendance but the local New York economy has lost out. I wonder how often that scenario has played out over the past few years.

Frankly, the whole thing was a gas. It's a farce about dalliance but it works best when played absolutely straight as it was here. And the singing was superb. The crowning glory was a threesome on a four-poster bed between the main principals which was a bisexual gender-bending delight.

For my ripe palate, it was one of the sexiest things I have seen in ages and no-one removed any of their clothes and all three singing actors trilled exotically throughout. Wonderful, marvellous, superb entertainment. If the production with this cast every comes to Covent Garden, I shall go like a shot.

There was one other little bit of drama that was revealed later. Juan Diego Florez arrived at the theatre only moments before the performance was due to begin. He had been present for the birth of his first child. In fact, he helped deliver the child alongside two midwives at his Manhattan home. The child, a boy, Leandro, arrived in the world just 35 minutes before curtain up. Fabulous.

You'd imagine, wouldn't you, that I couldn't stand any more excitement by now.

But no.

If my first encounter with Scot was great fun, this was just something else - one of the best fucks I've had in a long time. There was one ten minute section when we were locked into doggie position which was positively sublime.

The lad has haunches which are delightfully proportioned. He is someone for whom the word callipygous was created. And he has an ass like a Hoover.

There's one other lovely thing too. If you scratch his lower back, just above where the gluteus maximus begins, then his back arches and he simply presents himself ready for fucking.

Clearly, this is doing something for my self-esteem (which is part of the purpose of it all) as Roland remarked that I had something of a twinkle about me when I saw him later.

You might wonder what my Rossi thinks about all of this. And yes, of course, it is not easy for him. But, remarkably, he trusts me.

I don't want another lover and I'm not about to trade him in for another, younger model. I want him as my life partner but our sex life has stalled over the past few years and, having tried to find a way back with him and not achieved much success, I'm trying other means.

Only time will tell if what I'm doing will help in any way but, at least, I am making a positive effort and I am having some fun along the way.

By God, am I having some fun.