It was great to explore the historic old town in Ghent and fantastic to revisit Madrid. My last performance at the Teatro Real was with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and René Jacobs on 13 June 2023, when we performed Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. This time I took the opportunity to visit the Parque de el Retiro. I got back to the hotel before the heavens opened, and later made a dash to the metro to get to the Opéra station next to the Teatro Real; this was extreme rainfall with roads turning to rivers and passing vehicles soaking the pedestrians even more! After the rehearsal the rain had relented enough to be able to make my way to the incredible Mercado de San Miguel for tapas, amid the hustle and bustle. 

 
Lionel Meunier, director of Vox Luminis, sang bass and played the recorder in this production. I played first trumpet, including the trumpet solos in ‘Hark! The echoing air a triumph sings’, sung by Carine Tinney, and ‘Thus, thus the gloomy world began to shine’, sung by Kieran White. I played on the opposite side of the stage to Will Russell on 2nd trumpet and Marianne Soroka, timpani and percussion, was situated in the middle of the stage at the back of the orchestra. 

As with Purcell’s King Arthur (which I performed with Vox Luminis when I first met them at Snape Maltings in 2017), The Fairy Queen was performed as a semi-staged concert version, which once again featured the narration of Simon Robson. I used to teach Simon’s son the trumpet, and I am delighted to hear that he has recently graduated from Oxford University with a first class degree in Music!