I think Limelight’s editor Francis Merson is winning the Most Exotic Blogging Locale right now, with his fantastic updates from the Trondheim Festival of Chamber Music in Norway. So, since I can’t hope to compete on quality, I shall have to settle for quantity, and offer you updates from three — count ’em, three — semi-exotic locales instead. And maybe, if I’m really, really subtle about it, nobody will notice that what I’m really doing is making up for my deplorable slackness in updating this blog.

I last blogged from Hong Kong, but wrote about Santa Fe. Hong Kong does deserve its own update, though. We were there for the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s season opening concerts of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, which was paired with Mozart’s Symphony No 41 Jupiter. Sydney concertgoers may well have heard The Tenor in My Life sing this with the SSO last year, with Ashkenazy at the helm and Lilli Paasikivi as the alto soloist. This time it was the Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes in charge — a reasonably short notice replacement for Edo de Waart, who had been forced to cancel for health reasons — and the alto was the extraordinary Michelle DeYoung.

Everything went very well indeed. The Hong Kong Philharmonic looked after us beautifully, the concert hall is excellent (I loved the green seats!) and they sure know how to market a concert: there were giant posters all around the Cultural Centre. Our favourite was the one with full length photos of the conductor and both soloists; all three of these photos having begun life as head-and-shoulder shots only, meaning that, yes, the HKPO had very kindly provided three entirely fictional sets of legs. Brilliant! The concerts were a big success. I’m pretty sure (as was he) that this was the best Das Lied Stuart has sung to date, and he’s sung a lot of them; and just like the last time I heard her, I was entirely bowled over by the glorious Michelle DeYoung. She may have spoilt me for all other Das Lied mezzos, but it was more than worth it. Michelle will be in Sydney at the beginning of December for Ashkenazy’s Mahler 2 with the SSO and I implore you to go: her Mahler has to be heard to be believed.

Against the apparent wishes of Air New Zealand, who attempted to leave us stranded, we flew from Hong Kong to my hometown, Dunedin. This was planned as a family visit, not an operatic trip, but the timing was coincidentally perfect for Stuart to judge the Dunedin Senior Vocal Competitions. These were a highlight of my year when I still lived there, so I was thrilled to be there again, and this time with a backstage pass of sorts. There was lots of great singing this year, and the lovely young soprano Maia Vegar, who won both the Aria Competition and the Cleveland Scholarship (the two biggest prizes on offer) is definitely One To Watch.

Between our trips to the Speight’s Brewery, the Moeraki Boulders and my former high school — because I really am that much of a girly swot — Stuart also managed to squeeze in a recital at the University of Otago, at a Bargain Of the Century price: just $5 entry for 50 minutes of Korngold (swoon), Liszt, Turina and Wagner. Voices like his don’t often make it as far south as Dunedin, so I think those who came along were pretty delighted. And just before we left, he also ran a masterclass with some of the university’s vocal students, which was both hilarious and fascinating — funnily enough, we don’t sit around at home for an evening discussing technique, so it was quite illuminating to hear him do so with these young singers, and wonderful to see the immediate, sometimes dramatic change which his suggestions wrought in their performances.

After New Zealand we spent two days travelling — both of them my birthday — and two days in Orlando, and then yesterday, just for a change, boarded yet another plane, this time to Switzerland. (Yes, flying straight here from NZ would have been more efficient and less exhausting, but for boring administrative reasons — and also because the chance to unpack and actually be at HOME is worth almost anything — we didn’t.)

This stay in Zürich is much shorter than the last: just two weeks, for two performances of the Gatti/Guth Parsifal which premiered here back in June. Rehearsals only began about two hours ago, and I’m not there, so I have nothing to report on that front, but I do have a name-droppy anecdote to share already. We arrived at our apartment late yesterday afternoon, only to find that the key we had didn’t open the door. A neighbour came down to help us. Then she was joined by her husband — who turned out to be José van Dam. Yes, that José van Dam. And just as I was trying to process this information, our other neighbour appeared on the landing above — and it was Peter Seiffert, legendary Heldentenor and widower of one Lucia Popp, the woman ultimately responsible for my love of opera. So there we were, with two legends of the opera world trying to wrench our door open. I’ve had some pretty cool opera singer encounters this year, but I think it’s fair to say this one trumps them all — it was like some sort of surreal dream sequence.

So, in honour of my new neighbours (nope, still don’t quite believe it), let’s finish up with a clip from Meistersinger, featuring Seiffert as von Stolzing, his wife Petra Maria Schnitzler as Eva, and José van Dam as Hans Sachs.