New opera season approaching

This year's opera season is nearing an end. The highlight has, without doubt, been Guiseppe Verdi's Rigoletto that played last week - and although Peter Grimes (only remaining) probably will be good, I take the chance of already declaring Rigoletto the best of the season.

Next year's season is approaching rapidly and I've already secured tickets for

Should be a nice season indeed 🙂

The month of traveling

September ended up becoming this year's Month of travel. It started off with a trip to Dortmund, Germany between the 17th and 19th in relation to Inter-tabac, a cigar gathering. As I'm the majority owner of a cigar importer in Norway this proved to be a very informative event. Below is a picture of myself and Augusto's General Manager (the GM) together with Don Pepin Garcia and his son, as well as the GM together with Pete Johnson of Tatuaje cigars.

The next trip went to Zurich, Switzerland for the annual Euromoney Covered Bond Congress. This trip included a casino night with UBS and me capitulating and purchasing an iPad. As the picture below shows I apparently also inadvertently applied for The Blues Brothers next to our taxi, a nice old Caddilac.

The final trip of the month, from 29th to 1st of October went to Octoberfest in Munich, Germany. If the picture of myself wearing Läderhosen isn't appropriate, I'm not sure what is.

My Opera Calendar

Granted I've always been an opera nut, but this year I am particularly looking forwards to the season, which is set up with a few twists.

15 August 2010: AIDA by Guiseppe Verdi
I'm not gonna write too much about the opera itself, that can quite easily be read elsewhere, e.g. on wikipedia . What is special about this one is the location. Its played outdoors on Oscarsborg Fortress, most famous for, on April 9, 1940 sinking the German heavy cruiser BlĂĽcher.

So I'm hoping for some decent weather on this one, to fully enjoy the play against the castle walls.

So, for the more traditional locations, in the Oslo Opera house where the other 7 are played.

31 August 2010: Tosca by Giacomo Puccini

23 October 2010: The wedding of Figaros by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

17 December 2010 Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

20 January 2011 Orphée by Philip Glass

25 February 2011 Lulu by Alban Berg

3 April 2011 Rigoletto by Guiseppe Verdi
I consider this show the highlight of the season. A fun trivia is that the ring tone on my cellphone, La Donna e Mobile by Guiseppe Verdi is from this Opera.

6 June 2011 Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten