I have always felt that working in opera feels like leading a simultaneous life in different years. Yesterday, I wrote about the start of rehearsals for our upcoming 2009/10 season. At the same time we work on completing the casting and prepare the productions of 2011/12 and 2012/13. Over the summer I have started thinking about 2013/14 and we will embark on a first planning and budgeting process for this season very soon. Also, as a new season is about to start and changes from being the "next" to the "current" season we get into preparing the public announcement of the new next season. So this morning I had a three hour meeting with our marketing department and agency to talk about the programming of 2010/11, trying to identify a common theme for the season as well as the specifics of every single opera. This will lead us to develop the imagery for the season and eventually results in our season brochure.

After this intense morning I had a very welcome lunch break in the beautiful courtyard of our offices on Front Street East. False beards and hats had turned our development department into a group of pirates for their annual barbecue.

The afternoon was spent with another long meeting about our messaging objectives (you will certainly hear about this on the blog once the initiative starts rolling out) and the weekly management meeting.

Tomorrow will be another long and busy day with my first performance of opera in Toronto since the end of May.