vol. 15: self-portraits as croissants - spring 2023 ed.
It feels like too long since I wrote a books and breakfasts but my head has been positively too full of essays, contemporary music repertoire, lieder and sisterly wedding duties (countdown for my sis’ wedding is on!!).
After a cross-Canada finale last week, I’ve finished my semester and my season of concerts/auditions. My amazing friend/collaborative duo partner extraordinaire Perri Lo and I placed third in the national finals of the Eckhardt-Grammaté (E-Gré) Competition in Manitoba (scroll to see us grinning like sillies with the mayor of Brandon). We had a blast prepping for this competition including viewings of Kenneth Branagh’s very dramatic film of Hamlet, many deep discussions, laughs, adventures to find the one cute brewery in Brandon (in honour of Claude Vivier’s “Hymnen an die Nacht”/Nacho… don’t ask…) and very budget breakfasts in slightly sketchy Manitoba Travelodges (whoever said classical music was glamorous!!).
I followed the E-Gré finals up with a little trip to Winnipeg to see Manitoba Opera’s brilliant Canadiana Cosi fan tutte starring one of my most beloved teachers and mentors (a company I’ve worked for virtually but never experienced live!!), to finally stay with my close friend and his partner and go on the epic tour of Winnipeg they’ve been planning for me for years (the Canadian Human Rights Museum is totally worth a trip! And that BRUNCH scene!!), audition for another company there, hop a flight for another westerly audition, then make it back just in time for my sister’s 2000s themed bachelorette in Toronto my sister-in-law and I had been planning for months (I was pretty proud of our hats!). Obviously the moment it was all over, I crashed with a horrible stomach virus but am finally coming back to normal and am happily in Montreal awaiting the visit of a dear friend currently on the train from Toronto! *exhale*
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Now that my semester is over, I have a few months to do some pleasure reading. Lately I’ve been dipping between Stephen Cope’s Yoga and the Quest for the True Self in anticipation of an upcoming yoga retreat, Jenny Slate’s Little Weirds, Jenny Odell’s new philosophical tome, Saving Time (I loved her first book!), Kukum by Michel Jean (en français) and Matthew Aucoin’s The Impossible Art, which my friend gifted me upon leaving Winnipeg. If you’re not familiar, Matthew Aucoin is a wunderkind of a composer who had one of his works recently premiered at the Metropolitan Opera to a libretto by the wonderful playwright, Sarah Ruhl. Check him out talking about his opera, Eurydice, below:
Here’s an excerpt from Jenny Slate’s Little Weirds that resonated with me, for obvious reasons…:
“One of my fantasy dimensions is: Strangers on the street see me and think I might be French. You are a stranger. You see me, and you think that there I am, a French Woman. And then you look at me and allow a deeper kind of feeling-sight to occur, and you see past the woman and you sense that I am actually a homemade Parisian Croissant, and I was born in a kitchen in a house with cool stone floors and deep windowsills that hold the light in the shape of a big box, windowsills that are so deep that they could be a desk. I was born as a breakfast pastry in the fancy part of France and hours after I was born I was still warm from the heat of the oven. I knew that my warmth and lovely shape were the result of thoughtful and gentle work. Oh please feel it: I am the croissant that felt its own heat and curves and wished to become a woman, and I am that woman from the wish. Let me be your morning treat with your coffee. Disregard the fear that I am too rich to be an ordinary meal. Allow my antique decadence into your morning into your mouth. Pair me with jam. Treasure me for my layers and layers of fragility and richness. Name me after a shape that the moon makes. Have me in a hotel while you are on vacation. Look at me and say, “Oh, I really shouldn’t, just because you want to have me so very much.”
That could truly be Books and Breakfasts’ manifesto. Now that my stomach’s better, I think it only fitting that my friend and I head over to the local boulangerie for a croissant ce matin.
(Self-portrait as a croissant… actually Julie Manet by wonderful Berthe Morisot, and adventures in Aix-en-Provence with croissants a couple of summers ago.)
As we close, I’d love to know… what’s on your spring/summer reading list? Any recommendations? xox
Beautiful and enjoyable reading! Thank you, Sara. ♥️