Just a thought: After "messy Christmas"....

The best Christmas Tree I received was this picture of this edible Christmas Tree, from Shanghaï... posted by a very young friend of mine I will meet again in April! Otherwise it is all the same around here and the only source of hope and joy comes from the children and music of course. Food tends to be boring in its excess not that we exaggerate but the tendancy here is to eat too much, and television is always boring! My two very nice musical outings were before Christmas,with Natalie Dessay and Michel Legrand's revival of the sixties, plus nice Claude Nougaro's tunes.The whole concert is on youtube and it is worth listening to. The house was packed and very cheerful ! so were the musicians. The Jazz first part was strange on Marseille Opera stage but after some time I found the whole thing very exciting!

Then a peaceful Bach celebration took place in Aix Cathedral which really cheered me up. It is a treat to listen to the organ in this place and I do not do it too often, not even once a year. This time, I planned to spend the evening in Aix so I did not have to rush back home on the late bus. It was rather chilly during the performance but the beauty of the extracts chosen from the Oratorio kept me warm enough. Music is always offering special paradisiac moments to share like this kind of echoing duet for the two sopranos and the clarinet. Of course I was in front of the telly for the opening night at La Scala, I missed Anja Harteros a lot and loved the rather non heroïc Lohengrin interpreted by Jonas Kaufmann. Now getting nearer and nearer to 2013, it is time to wish you, my four, five, perhaps six regular readers who have become blogfriends (and Facebook friends too through our mutual passion for the Mezzo voce and a brilliant singer in this category we enjoy travelling for !) a peaceful year, with lots of tenderness and plenty of time for yourself, because time is so precious. I hesitate between these two pictures to depict my turn of mind at the moment: Sharing hard times all around us here in Southern Europe and going back to childhood! And here 's 2013.....