JetPlane

Arrived back from skiing in Chamonix this afternoon, then hot footed it to see the last night of Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi at the ADC Theatre. The production was by the Cambridge University Baroque Ensemble & Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera, who have set up this nice web site. The lead playing Orpheus, Sam Furness, and the messenger, Suzana Ograjense, booth stood out with excellent performances. Adam Drew made a good Charon, his bass added a lot of atmosphere as did the makeup! The Ensemble as good, and really impressive when they sang together.

The music was wonderful: Dan Tidhar was great on the harpsichord and this pulled the whole piece together. We knew Stephen Mounsey and Anna Langley, playing cornet and lute, but we hadn’t anticipated they would have made such a grand appearance—Anna on stage for the opening scene, and Stephen in the middle isle as part of a grand wind instrument fanfare, from a few rows behind us.

I did need a prod half way through the second half: we’d had most of a bottle of shiraz by then and the heat, dark, and wine combined with our early start had me dozing nicely! The appearance of a grand golden Apollo descending from heaven in his chariot amidst a mass of gold and orange sunbeams made quite an impression and blew the cobwebs away (Michael poking me in the sides helped too!).

The most impressive staging I thought was the transition from the Styx, to the Palace of Hades. A gauze curtain provided a lit backdrop for Charon that was used to good effect, and the stage behind was lit to show the ensemble, dressed in grey and white gauze shrouds, drifting around on the stage, with Hades and Persephone behind on their thrones. Slick and ‘underwordly’. The ensemble sang behind the gauze screen which added to the atmosphere.

We really enjoyed the performance.

From the ADC web site:

“Baying creatures of the underworld, the descent Apollo from on high and woven through all, the power of music so beauteous it charms even the gods”

Join Orpheus on his perilous journey to Pluto’s realm where he, ravaged by grief, seeks to rescue his beloved wife, Euridice. Accompanied only by Hope and his magical lyre, Orpheus sets out upon a timeless tale of Love so strong it vies to overcome even Death. But will Pluto heed his pleas? Will Orpheus’ own weakness prove his very undoing?

As vibrant today as it was in 1607, the world’s first true opera bursts into life on the ADC stage in a brand new English translation. Brought to you by Cambridge’s finest young singers and a large, dazzling period-instrument orchestra, Monteverdi’s music alternately delights and twists at the heart, by turns ethereal and virtuosic.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to witness Orfeo at it’s best – fully staged and spectacular.

Finally, on the last day of skiing, we made it for a day to Les Grandes Montets, which is high (3300m) and has long, long runs. No strikes, no clouds, just great weather and freezing cold (the slopes were in the shade). There was quite a queue to get up in the gondola from Argentière, and we started by skiing some of the blue runs. Took the worryingly named Herse lift up to the start of a long ski out: Combes–Pierre à Ric, right to the bottom of the valley, a descent of 1250m. Great fun and the bottom run, Pierre à Ric was my top run for the holiday—super fast, lots of wide pistes and great snow. I bombed it! Also good fun was the Snowpark, which we rode a few times over small man-made hills. Good fun, but with an audience. There were great views from the top of the mountain (sadly there is a pole in this shot, but we were so high up (2765m) that I had vertigo and couldn’t get close enough to the edge of the piste to frame the shot!)

I used the GPS on my phone to plot our morning’s travel, from Chamonix out to the mountain and up and down the slopes. The GPS trail in interesting, but the altitude trail is great and shows how big a descent is possible from this mountain.

Salad for lunch at Les Marmottons, at Argentière. Fun service and good, well-priced food. We had rather a long lunch and then headed up for a few more runs, including the Bochard red run. We were starting to feel a bit tired by then, and skiid out in three separate groups, enjoying the Pierre à Ric run while we still had some leg strength Michael and I managed to meet up with Vit and Jay back at Marmottons for a last drink, in the last sun of the day—big beers!

More drinks in the evening at the Jekyll, before a fun dinner at Le Boccalatte, where Vit and I shared a brasérade au beouf: a charcoal brazier on the table to roast strips of beef. It smelt (and tasted) great. The restaurant was packed and had a good atmosphere. Vit braved a raspberry sorbet with raspberry liquer, that came with a massive plastic flower and straw in it: they were out in a flash!

We still had one of the three main resorts left to try (well I did) and so we planned to go to Les Grands Montets. We left half an hour earlier than normal but when we got there, we found that there was a lift strike as part of a national dispute, so we ended up going back to Brévènt where there were some lifts open. We went back to the Lachenal red run that we enjoyed so much at the beginning of the week, but it was now a much tougher mogul run and it was a bit of a slog! We all made it though, and Michael found it was easier off piste down the side of the run.

We had great weather, as you can see from the photos and enjoyed stopping for a nice cup of tea—the slopes were pretty quiet and we found a nice outdoor hut.

Everyone came around our apartment to drink the Savoie wine that we bought and help eat some of the crisps, bread, cheese and sausage that seemed to have mounted up. We all then shared a cheesy fondue for dinner at Le Monchu. The mushroom fondue was particularly good. We ended up in a nice ‘local’ bar in the centre of town, Les Bistrot des Sports with a lot of attractive men it (nice!) and drank Affligem. There were icy drafts when the door opened an guys who sort of hung about in the half-open doorway!

My knee lasted the day today and I was all rested and ready to go! With some clouds in the sky (gloom) we headed off to Balme because we thought ti would be the least cloudy. When we go there we were lucky, the clouds had lifted at that end of the valley and we had a great day skiing in Balme, encountering only the occasional cloud. John was harassed at the Charamillion hut by some cunning blackbirds that threw ice from the roof at him in a ploy to get some food. I tried a grog there. not realising it was only rum and hot water – bleurgh!

We had a long ski out to Vallorcines down the Esserts Blue Run, and also had great fun on the reds: Solonges and Caisets on the ski out. We had a brief split up: Vit and Michael off to the Chatelet run with an exciting off-piste bowl full of moguls (too much for me), Jay and John went for a long blue Esserts down to Vallorcine, while I went back down the groomed Solonges red, which was very exciting.

In the evening, Michael and I went for dinner to Restaurant L’Impossible which was right next door the our local bar, Le Jekyll. The atmosphere and menu were great and we sat in front of a huge fire that belted out the heat at times. I had some escargots, which were smothered in the typical green, garlicy sauce, and Michael had little Savoie toasts with cheese and bacon. Michael fillet steak came out medium-well done, which had to be sent back (and was lovely on take two) I had scallops on a lovely leek and onion fry, which I thought when I ordered had seaweeed, but I wasn’t too sure it did when it arrived. I had Bretan something anyway. We had a few other little things thrown in for a lovely meal. The manager didn’t charge us for Michael steak, which was fair: we did have to eat our mains separately.

I had a day in the apartment today, playing Poker Dice and listening to music on my iphone, solving Mensa puzzles that we were given for Christmas and trying to read Gargantua Now (not going well). My knee was painful for walking but not when bent in skiing position! Tempting to go out with the others skiing. The weather wasn’t great today though: lots of low clouds over the pistes. I took the Planpraz Gondola up to Brévènt to meet the others for lunch. They had started the day on Les Grades Montets, but transferred over to Brévènt so they could avoid the cloud. Sadly it was cloudy there, but we all met up for a nice lunch (I had a very heavy Tartiflette that came from a massive wok thing by the door…), and I left the four of them skiing off into the cloud when I took the gondola back down to Chamonix.

I had a wander around town, ten got a text from MIchael to see he was giving up on the cloud skiing and he joined me for a wander around the shops: with the current parity between the Euro and the Pounds, we didn’t really want to buy anything! Stopped for a thé parfumé at Atelier Café, which was nice, and bought a couple of bottles of vin de Savoie to try in the apartment.

After drinks at Le Jekyll we met Vit, Jay and John for Happy Hours drinks at Le Jekyll, before heading off for dinner at La Poële Omeletterie, the omelets were of course very nice and we had a good evening. It was a cold evening when we wandered into town. We had drinks at Cafe La Terrasse which is a lovely building inside (strange on the outside). We sat upstairs by the massive single-glazed windows which was pretty chilly. We were thrown out at 11, for a party that was signed on the door as 23:00–23:30!

Last night, when I thought about it, I realized that all I’d had to drink when I was skiing was a glass of vin chaud. So it should have been no surprise when I developed a cracking headache. I managed half my seafood pizza (very cheesy) before I had to go back to the apartment, take some ibuprofen and collapse in bed. Must drink more *water* tomorrow!