All week the beautiful voice of The Queen Of The Night has been floating over the village as the opera company Aria Alba - Opera For All have rehearsed The Magic Flute in the nearby adventure centre, in preparation for their Fringe perfomance at the Edinburgh Festival. In this production the setting is a hospital ward in the 1950's and Sarastro is the consultant psychiatrist! They put on a dress rehearsal in a local village hall - it was wonderful. It is rather like attending a masterclass - you get insights you don't get from a regular performance.
I came home with my head full of Mozart and was frustrated that I couldn't easily find the Mozart CD's I know I have, so what better way to spend a wet Sunday (yes, it's raining) than organise our collection.
Found some Mozart, put it on very loud, and set to....
Then I found a few tips -
Tip one. Make tabs with the letters of the alphabet. I used post it notes for now.
We have a tall CD shelving unit (Ikea - brilliant) in the study and Tip two is to leave a couple of spaces on each shelf for new additions otherwise you have to move everything when you buy a new CD or find some in the car, and, although I'm enjoying doing this task, I don't want to do it again anytime soon.
Tip three is if you want to think something through properly - decide to write a blog post about it! I have done a much better job of this than I would have had I not been writing about it - an incentive to get it right. But not perfect. Tip four is don't aim for perfect - this is about making finding the music I want simpler and quicker! When it's good enough I'm stopping.
Meanwhile I've found CD's I'd forgotten I had and listened to some great music.
Playing now? The Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Listen here. Hope you like..