There is a downpour outside at the moment, making me all the more glad that I took the sunny opportunity to walk around Montmartre yesterday. Yes, Montmartre, the San Francisco of Paris, with its hills and staircases, sex shops, and gorgeous cathedral. It was still bitterly cold outside when the wind picked up, but sun in Paris in the winter...can't help but go outside.
I took basically all of the same pictures last summer when I was here, but that was before the great computer crash of 2008, in which I lost all of my photos from my trip to Paris-Montepulciano-Nuremberg. But it's always interesting to see the Sacre Coeur, which is just so different from the other great cathedrals of Paris. They tend to the gothic, dark, with extra pillars and small spaces, while Sacre Coeur is so light and open, with all its modern stained glass and colorful mosaics. This time I also wandered around the cemetery... not quite as many hip graves as some of Paris' other cemeteries, but it certainly has some good ones: Degas, Offenbach, Foucault, Berlioz, etc. (speaking of whom - both Symphonie Fantastique and the Requiem premiered on this day in 1830 and 1837 respectively).
I'm still praying the sinus/ear infection (?) I have doesn't get worse. So far I can still sing and feel mostly fine; just blowing my nose and dealing with some pressure in my cavities. Which is good because I need to stay healthy for at least the next week! I have a lesson this evening with a very wonderful singer...will write more later about that. Finally have another audition scheduled for next week, and am still going to Germany to work on some of my German roles there (Orlofsky from Die Fledermaus and the ladies from Die Zauberfloete).
Last night went to another concert: the soprano Annick Massis, who makes me glad I'm not a soprano, so I don't have to sing all of these notes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4AGF2R6K1E (skip to 2:00 for her aria). Wow.
