By SALLLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Lifestyle Columnist

A certain pianist/singing coach near and dear to our hearts sends news: She will be joining the Cologne Opera in August.

The queen of networking, Mary keeps in touch with colleagues like Alan Nathan, a friend from her days at Indiana University. He was promoted recently to head coach at Cologne, and suggested Mary audition for his old position.

She got it.

“I'm excited,” she wrote. “It's a good house, an `A' house, I would say in the top 10 of German opera houses, with a rather famous orchestra (Guerzenich).

“I'll be doing what I've been doing — coaching singers, playing for scenic rehearsals, and in the orchestra as necessary. They also have a tiny theater built into the foyer where they do a lot of performances (mostly real operas) for kids. He asked me if I want to conduct any of these. The musicians are from the orchestra but it's an audience of 6-year-olds.”

Although Cologne is less than an hour by train from where Mary lives now, she went looking for a studio-apartment there because of the odd hours her work entails. Getting an apartment in a big German city is like winning a prize, she said. After a solid week of looking at what she called “nothing very exciting for what I'm willing to spend,” she wrote to an address north of the “main city ring,” and was surprised to get an invitation to see it.

“I'd better get a lot of extra gigs because my raise is more than gone!

It's two rooms, 38 square meters and newly tiled, and above [the landlord's] bakery, which he took me through on the way out. Huge bowls with oversized mixers! They have two stores, one there and one nearby.

“I'm one minute from the main street and the metro, five minutes to the Bahnhof [train station], and eight minutes [by train] to the theater — but probably 45 minutes on foot.

“Koln is a real mix. Some beautiful churches (Romanesque) and towers, the Rhine promenade, old market/Rathaus [city hall] plaza, and lots of forgettable in-between (90 percent destroyed in the war.)”

Naturally I fretted about Rainer, Mary's significant other, but she said he's happy for her. His hobby is train photography and he's looking to explore a new locale.

When he has time. He's second oboist in the orchestra, and just learned that the first oboist is ill and taking early retirement. Consistent with Gelsenkirchen's economic cutbacks, the position will not be filled; the plan is to divide the work among the remaining five instrumentalists.

Mary had also been teaching at the music school in Berlin every few weeks. She found Berlin interesting, a whirlwind of construction going on, and loved seeing opera there — a bus-man's holiday — but said she's glad to give it up. It was a five-hour trip on the fast train, and cost her more to travel and spend the night than she made.

“I thought I should keep my finger in, in case they ever have a full position,” she explained. “I may do some special projects where I'm there for a few days several times a year.

“Things have never run smoothly; either my boss forgets I'm coming, or the students don't come, or I have a day with a break of three hours in the middle. But it was a good excuse to get out of here and see some opera (I'm going to `Twilight of the Gods' on Sunday; saw `Tristan und Isolde' a few weeks ago — five and a half hours!)

“The train time to Berlin just dropped to four hours on the ICE [InterCity Express]. And a Frauenhotel [for women only] opened near the Hochschule, the same price as my favorite pension, but with a shower included and no breakfast. Too bad they weren't open earlier.

“Also not far from Potsdamer Platz, they've opened a mall, Arkaden; although three stories high, somehow it's still hidden behind all the construction projects, with little fake waterways and streets that look like Disneyland. Plus a huge cinema, an IMAC center, some high-rises and half-built apartment buildings going up over the U-Bahn [subway], meaning they're essentially on stilts that go down a hundred meters; you can imagine the expense.”

She and Rainer are off to Italy for a few weeks vacation now. In a letter accompanying a birthday gift to her Dad, mailed mid-June, she said:

“We're getting cool and rainy weather again. Thursday we hope to make it through the Alps and maybe stop in Como. Then a few days in Genoa and the Ligurian Coast, and then to Livorno (which for some reason is called Leghorn in English).

“We'll spend the night in a cabin on the ferry, and then leave for Bastia, Corsica, at 8 the next morning. Back a week later, then maybe some tourist stuff. The leaning tower of Pisa is open again, Sienna, Tivoli Gardens near Rome, Spoleto, Urbino, on the other coast, Venice, Verona. Would like to see the newly restored Last Supper in Milan and an opera at La Scala....”

More opera. Maybe I'll go move in with her and see a few myself, now that I have a choice of two cities. March is looking good: “Carmen,” “Marriage of Figaro,” “Tales of Hoffmann,” and “Macbeth” at Cologne, and I think Gelsenkirchen will be doing “Magic Flute.”

Yeah. I like the sound of that.

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