Musically Speaking

Here’s what the post­man brought me today. First, our tick­ets arrived for A Day on the Green’s Sade con­cert at Rochford Wines in Decem­ber. I’m so excited to see her in con­cert, live! I used to lis­ten to her CDs over and over a cou­ple of decades ago. Should be a really great night.

The other tick­ets that arrived today are for Kiri Te Kanawa, and they cost us noth­ing! Nada. Rien du tout. Gor­nisht! Nix. How come? Because my dar­ling hus­band is a mem­ber of the Chan­don Wine Club, and here’s the email he received last week:

Dear Moshe,

Oh, what a dame!

Chan­don is thrilled to offer our Chan­don Wine Club mem­bers the exclu­sive oppor­tu­nity to see the leg­endary Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in con­cert in Mel­bourne.
We have three dou­ble passes up for grabs for each of the event dates below. The first Chan­don Wine Club mem­bers to email … after mid­day on Mon­day 5 Sep­tem­ber with their pre­ferred event date will win.

Imag­ine sip­ping Chan­don whilst lis­ten­ing to one of the world’s great­est voices…it’s the ulti­mate duet!

Date: Sat­ur­day 8 Oct 2011
Time: 6.00pm
Where: BMW Edge, Fed­er­a­tion Square, VIC
(each dou­ble pass val­ued at $500.00)

Date: Tues­day 11 Oct 2011
Time: 8.00pm
Where: Mel­bourne Town Hall, VIC
(each dou­ble pass val­ued at $398.00)

Such a shame we couldn’t go on the Sat­ur­day, that would have been amaz­ing! But we could go on the Tues­day, so I wrote up an email, sent it to Moshe, and he had it all ready to go for Mon­day at noon. The plan was that since he’d be out at his Mon­day morn­ing meet­ing, I should make sure I go to his com­puter (he’s the mem­ber, not me), and when the computer’s time ticked over to mid­day, I should hit the send but­ton imme­di­ately. Well, the best laid plans… Where was I at 11:50am? A ten minute drive away at Baby Bunting with my daugh­ter, Devo­rah, putting a deposit on a pram for the baby!

Panic set in, and I quickly called Moshe. “Can you send it from your iPhone?” Of course he could. So, obvi­ously, we won the tick­ets. I called Mum, and she couldn’t believe it. Have I men­tioned that she trained as an opera singer, and fol­low­ing her first and very suc­cess­ful con­cert in Mor­well, she was offered the lead female role in Paint Your Wagon, to tour around Aus­tralia and New Zealand, an oppor­tu­nity that unfor­tu­nately, and for rea­sons I won’t go into here, she wasn’t able to take up. Later, she stud­ied with Joan Sutherland’s teacher, and sang the main role of Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème. Then she was offered the role of Gilda in Verdi’s Rigo­letto, because she really was a col­oratura soprano. Singing was, and always will be, her pas­sion, and I’m so happy to go to this con­cert with her.