A National Treasure

I can`t say am an opera fan, nor one of classical music but there are some bits that I do enjoy.

Watching Last Night of the Proms is one of them and last night, as tenor Joseph Calleja sang the wonderful Granada, reminded me very much of my first cruise – on Fred Olsen`s Braemar.

As we waited to embark in Southampton my friend and I were a little apprehensive as we had heard all the stories about Fred`s cruisers being older, how wrong we were! Yes there were many older people and loads of past passengers on the cruise to the Canary Islands but do they know how to enjoy themselves! It was a wonderful first cruise.

We had selected 2nd seating for dinner and a table for 8 in the main restaurant. We arrived the first evening to find 4 of our dining companions already seated but the remaining 2 places remained empty for that evening. We had a wonderful meal and looked forward to the rest of our cruise.

We arrived the next evening for dinner and again the 2 seats were empty – for a while. A few minutes later two people joined us, both males,  and my friend and I thought “oh no they are trying to matchmake” – not true ! The two guys turned out to be the opera singer and his accompanist who were performing on the cruise.

Tenor Rodolfo Cavero was born in Peru, which was a strange coincidence as I had just returned from a trip to Macchu Picchu, and David Zobel was the French pianist.

As the evening went on we all chatted together and got on really well.In fact as the cruise progressed we all became really good friends and had a great time. The boys insisted on accompanying us to the shows every evening, and we all danced the night away in the disco afterwards, as I say Fred`s client do know how to party! We all went ashore together and explored the ports of call, lunched in the Palms Cafe and had a fabulous time.

Now remember these guys were performing on board so we felt obliged to go and hear them perform, as none of the party at our table knew much about opera this was a new experience for us, but how we enjoyed it. We dutifully went along to every concert in the Neptune lounge on every afternoon they appeared. They were both brilliant, but the highlight for us all was when Rodolfo sang Granada, at his last concert, and dedicated it tour our table.

After the cruise David Zobel left to take up a position as coach at the prestigious Vienna Opera house, his ultimate goal is to be a world renowned conductor.

Rodolfo is great but has a hidden secret! He had been chosen to appear at the Millenium Concert  at the Royal Albert Hall to sing with no other than Cliff Richard! He was chosen because his voice was the perfect match to Sir Cliff`s. He told us what a wonderful experience it had been but how he couldn`t understand why there was so much fuss around Sir Cliff as he had never really heard of him before! He just didn`t realise that he is one of our National Treasures !!

What an experience!