One of the biggest dangers in our business is that singers can get sick and aren't able to perform. This is what happened to Adrianne Pieczonka, our Ariadne. Half way through the dress rehearsal on Wednesday she had to cancel and the virus she caught was so persistent that yesterday at 8:30am she called in sick for the opening of Ariadne auf Naxos as well. It is particularly disappointing for a singer not to be able to sing the opening night of a production and I hope Adrianne will be in great form for the second performance on Tuesday.

For financial reasons we don't have a cover system with understudies for every single role, some of them are taken care of by the members of the Ensemble Studio, if appropriate, and we always try to make sure that we cover the most important or difficult cast. As an understudy for Ariadne we are fortunate enough to have Amber Wagner from the Ryan Opera Center at Chicago Lyric Opera. She mastered taking over the dress and performing Ariadne for yesterday's opening night with admirable confidence. What a great voice. Thank you, Amber.

This isn't exactly a calm weekend. After yesterday's opening I started today at the residence of Sabine Sparwasser, the German Consul General, then went to the Four Seasons Centre to do my intermission duty at the third performance of La Cenerentola. Now, I'm at home and will soon leave for dinner with Lotfi Mansouri, my pre-pre-predecessor as General Director of the COC. Lotfi will be with us for a week to pass on his wealth of knowledge to our young artists of the Ensemble Studio.