Spring is here, it seems. At least, I got to spend a few hours in the sun with my friend Brad Moore (who serves as assistant conductor of Ariadne auf Naxos at the moment) on my favourite terrace at Nadège on Queen West yesterday afternoon. One wonders whether we will be punished with another snow storm for this one day of nice weather in the course of the week. Probably, my wife and daugther were right with going to Paris for Easter. I hear of uninterrupted sunshine and almost 30 degrees Celsius...

However, there can be no doubt that spring has arrived at the COC with the opening of Rossini's La Cenerentola on Saturday evening. It is always wonderful to be back in performance at the Four Seasons Centre, but the enthusiastic cheering after the performance on Saturday was especially gratifying. It would have been nice to find at least some of our public's enthusiasm in today's reviews.

While we continue our run of Cenerentola this week we will start on-stage rehearsals for Orfeo and get Ariadne auf Naxos ready to open on Saturday. Also, the members of the Ensemble Studio will present a triple bill of Ana Sokolovic's Dring, dring, Samuel Barber's A Hand of Bridge and Giancarlo Menotti's The Telephone at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on Thursday.

Enjoy your week.