Szeged Hungary to be exact. A lovely town 2 hours outside of Budapest, full of gorgeous architecture, healing baths, mineral springs, paprika and a salami museum (who knew?). My opera colleagues and I embarked on this adventure Nov. 12th (a Wednesday) and traveled from NYC to Paris (6 hour flight there with a 4 hour lay over in Paris) then from Paris to Budapest (2 hour flight) and then a 2 hour bus ride to Szeged where we would be competing in the Mezzo Television Opera Festival and Competition. I believe all in all we arrived in Szeged officially on Thursday (and pretty much collapsed, ate and then collapsed again until we had to be up the next day for rehearsal).
Friday consisted of Breakfast followed by 12 hours of rehearsals to prepare us for our Live Television Performance for the next day (Saturday)...It was quite exhilarating AND successful as the audience response was more than positive with many ovations by the end. Following our live performance on Saturday, we attended a reception where our production and staff were greeted with champagne and smiling faces. On Sunday we reprised our performance to another sold-out audience and said good by to our much loved opera, Emmeline (which we have been involved with since this last August). Monday was our "day off" with time to wander about Szeged, a few brave souls took a train to Budapest and back in time for the Awards Ceremony and Gala that night at the opera house. Our leading Soprano and Tenor both won top awards and we were so thrilled to walk away with such honors.
I did get away a few times through out the week to experience beautiful Szeged...eating hot cherry soup, veal stew with egg dumplings, pork steak with mushroom rice, artichokes & olives, and many other wonderful meals that included lamb and veal. Generally the veggies with our meals consisted of being battered and deep fried and/or served with a cheese sauce...not necessarily the healthiest of eats, but tasty :) Oh and the Paprika...Szeged is known for their paprika and everything was served with it, including my morning eggs (delish!) Another interesting fact is that Szeged is apparently also know for their salami and that experience can be fully realized by visiting the Salami Museum (which I missed on this trip).
We finally left Tuesday morning from Szeged, full of Goulash and hungover from our celebrations of the week. Thus we embarked...1st with our 2 hour bus trip to Budapest, then a 2 hour flight from Budapest to Paris...then ANOTHER 4 hour lay over in Paris (in which we got in some fun shopping) until our 7 hour flight from Paris to NYC (the extra hour is because we were flying against the jet stream)...and finally arriving home Wednesday night at JFK and back to our loved ones. The Maestro in fact met me at the airport and took me home, cuddling all the way *sigh* such a great guy :D
I'll post more pics as the come, but until then, here's the share:
Lay-Over in Paris Airport (I think we're loosing it)
&
Me and my girl Dina having our first Hungarian Coffee (Irish coffee for me actually as she sipped espresso.)
Behind cool seats that were made of our leads for the opera festival
&
me and some of the girls at our Opening Night Reception.
1 comment:
Ahem...it's been over a month since your last blog.....Just sayin'.
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