After having been in Europe for quite a long period I suffer from really serious jetlag. For the second day already I woke up at three in the morning, which in London would be 8 a.m. and perfect to get up. However, I am in Toronto, so I wait until it is time to go to the office and then I start getting tired again in the early evening. The confusion my body is in will be complete when I travel to the west coast on Friday with a time difference of minus three hours. Then I will return to Toronto for a few days, only to leave again, this time for Santa Fe, with a time difference of minus two hours. Luckily, I have no further travel plans until late September after that and really look forward to settling into one time zone in August.
 
As every Wednesday, the day began with the artistic meeting which includes my closest artistic collaborators Roberto Mauro, Sandy Gavinchuk and Phil Boswell. Today was a longer meeting than usual as I gave a report of my European trip and all the singers I had heard in audition and performance. We then discussed the state of preparation of our future seasons. Everything until 2012/2013 is very much under way now and my plans for 2013/2014 get more and more precise. Being away from the office has helped me a lot to get my ideas for this season clearer. We will now start scheduling and budgeting it. Hopefully, in two or three months from now the grand lines will be set.
 
After a filmed interview about our Xstrata Ensemble Studio School Tour, one of the COC's most important educational initiatives (watch out for more reports in November), I met with Atom Egoyan for lunch. If you haven't seen his latest film Adoration, try to find it. It is wonderful and features Toronto very prominently. Atom is in the middle of finishing his next film Chloe for the Toronto International Film Festival and I am already impatient to see it. In the past, he has directed Salome and Die Walküre for the COC and I would love to have him back for a new project. He is a great director, very passionate about opera and very interested in understanding the psychology of operatic characters. There is a number of pieces well suited to his psychological and analytic approach. But on top of all he is a wonderful advocate for Toronto as a major cultural city. It is important for me to see him connected with our company.
 
In the afternoon I went to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts to attend the "Bauprobe" for our upcoming production of The Nightingale & Other Short Fables. Bauprobe is a German word. It is a technical rehearsal which helps to clarify how the production will actually look in the theatre. Because of the unusual setup for this production by Robert Lepage, it was important to resolve some sightline issues which we successfully did. David Feheley, our Technical Director, had interrupted his vacation for a day and I profited from his presence to give him and our Production Manager Lee Milliken an update on my meetings in Europe about possible co-productions and projects with some of our European colleagues.
 
Tomorrow will be another day filled with meetings before I take off to the west coast.