Diamonds

Yesterday evening I made my way out to Hinsdale, a prosperous western suburb of Chicago.  One of our most energetic and creative young board members arranged what was for us an unusual event - a musical evening with diamonds, specifically the "Opera Collection" of a quite old jewelery company called A.Link, in partnership with the Chicago magazine CS, and a local Hinsdale jeweler, Browning and Sons.  On a miserable evening there was a huge turnout.  How many diamonds were sold?  No doubt we will discover in due course since a small part of the proceeds will come to COT. 

The most significant thing was that we met a whole new circle of potential opera goers - and Kari Sorenson, a member of our company last season, whetted their appetites with three numbers from her collection.  Kari has just finished the run of Amadeus at the Shakespeare Theater here in Chicago.  After spending three months with a bunch of actors she is now among singers again.  She will get used to it!

This morning we had our quarterly education committee meeting.  We just published our "Opera Insights" program.  An impressive achievement for our one person education department.  And there is more to come.  Our website gives a full overview of our educational programs - preparing the opera audiences of both the present and the future.

And after a quick lunch in the office I popped out for some exercise in the park where the temperature was well sub zero.  Does it not look cold?

Tomorrow I will spend the morning doing "mock auditions" at Roosevelt University.  This will be another chance to hear the present group so to that extent they will be real auditions.  I will then do my "tips and tricks" speech, similar to that I did at Boston University a couple of weeks ago.

All in a week's work...............