Name: Joseph Lia
Age: 32
Occupation: Student at the St Petersburg State Conservatory, studying vocal performance and pedagogy.
My best holiday ever…
At 6 a.m. after a heavy night in Lloret del MarI fell asleep on top of a very loud speaker
Nowadays I usually spend my summer holidays in Malta, and I always enjoy the excellent weather, the feeling of being home and visiting friends for fun and refreshment.
I would never return to…
Fortunately no holiday has left me with such a bad taste that I would say I’ll never return. However, if I ever go back to the Canary Islands, I would not stay in the same part of Tenerife as I did. It was the nightlife area and largely populated by drunks from across Europe – it was hardly the exotic setting I had expected.
The most dangerous place I’ve visited…
When I went to San Remo some 10 years ago, I remember walking in the street one evening and all of a sudden a police car stopped near me and two policemen got out, pointed a gun at the guy opposite and arrested him. I was later told that a pharmacy had just been burgled.
My favourite city…
My favourite city abroad has now become St Petersburg, although I was amazed by Venice too during my last visit to Italy.
Although not the best place on earth for climate, with temperatures plummeting as low as -30°C in January and February, Russia’s traditional cultural capital is full of life and high culture.
The city is full of palaces, museums, concert halls, drama theatres, opera and ballet theatres, and let’s not forget the Hermitage, the immense winter palace of the Russian Tsars.
There are four opera theatres with a full weekly repertoire, and one of them is the 1,500-seat theatre of the Conservatory, where I usuallyperform.
Sadly, there are no roofless opera theatres. They are now building Mariinski’s second opera theatre (and the city’s fifth), but the no-roof concept has not arrived in Russia yet, or being a country with lots of corruption, I suppose if Renzo Piano was competing for the planning of this project, even though his was the best proposal, it wouldn’t stand a chance.
My most memorable experience on an aircraft…
Last year I was returning from Malta to St Petersburg with a stopover in Frankfurt. I had a six-hour break, so I phoned Masha, a friend of mine who happened to be working just outside Frankfurt in an au-pairprogramme, and asked if wecould meet.
We met near the main train station and spent some time going around Frankfurt. Then I returned to the airport on time, went through the whole security process again and had some time to go around the shops as well.
When I went to the board the aircraft, I discovered they had changed the gate. The airport is so large that when I arrived at the new gate they told me the bus had already left.
I calmly told them, “Well I’ll wait for the next one,” to which the gate attendant replied, “You don’t realise sir, but you’ve missed your flight!”
My calmness changed to panic. They could do nothing but offer me the next flight to St Petersburg, which was at 8 a.m. the next day.
I phoned my friend again and explained what happened. Thankfully, her au-pair family kindly offered me shelter for the night,dinner and transport back to the airport the next day.
My biggest gaffe abroad…
During my first week in Russia, my Russian vocabulary was not more than 10 words. While I was in a marshrutka (a mini van with a fixed route that can drop you off whenever you like), I had difficulty remembering how to apologise.
The sudden braking by the driver – whose main objective is to make the maximum number of trips in a day and pack the van each time – caused my bag to hit another passenger hard in the face.
Instead of telling him I was sorry in Russian, the first word that came to my mind was ‘spasibo’, meaning thank you. Realising I had added insult to injury by the poor man’s reaction to my ‘apology’, I quickly told the driver to open the door and I jumped off.
The friendliest people…
I had a wonderful time with Paco Valls, a bass-baritone from Valencia when I went to visit him in Spain. I still remember the best paella I’ve ever had on Malba Rosa beach.
Last February I went to visit my friend Christian Maggio in Vicenza and I had a great time.
I also had the pleasure of staying with my friend Donald Arthur (a belated happy birthday Donald – last Sunday was his 75th birthday), while I was trying to study German in Munich last summer. He is the type of guy you’ll never get bored with. He’s the greatest connoisseur of opera I’ve ever met, and a passionate epicurean as well.
I’ll never forget when Donald invited me to go to nearby Ingolstadt for a concert by the Filarmonica della Scala orchestra conducted by Semyon Bychkov, a friend of Donald’s and a graduate of St Petersburg Conservatory.
The ride to Ingolstadt is short, and we had planned to be in the hall in plenty of time (Donald’s policy not mine), but fate was not with us. Just before the train was about to depart, a bunch of American surfer types boarded the train loaded down with enough luggage to stock a department store. When we arrived in Ingolstadt, they waited calmly in their seats for the train to come to a complete stop before casually beginning totake down their suitcases from the overhead racks.
The attendant grabbed this live crustacean, dipped it in soy sauce and stuffed it in my mouth. As I bit it, I saw its tentacles still moving
Ingolstadt is not a very big city, and the train only stops there for around five minutes or less, but our friends had totally blocked the passageway to the door, and – you guessed it – the train pulled out of the station with us still on it along with a large collection of otherdisgruntled passengers.
Because we had to ride all the way to the next stop, Nuremberg, over half an hour away, then race to another platform to catch the next connection back, we completely missed the first half of the concert, but we did manage to hear a sterling performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony followed by a short but delightful get-together with Maestro Bychkov.
The taxi ride I will never forget…
The best taxi rides are in Russia. There is a well-known system allowing anyone to go out on the street and hail a taxi.
No meter system exists. All you have to do is to bargain for a price, or if it is an official taxi, they have fixed rates (even though they never stay fixed or get cheaper).
Most probably, an old Lada will stop, and a driver with a non-local accent and a golden smile (thanks to the gold caps on most of his teeth), will ask you ‘skolko?’ – meaning ‘how much?’ If you don’t know Russian you are just stuck, as these drivers know only their mother tongue and Russian.
My all-time favourite holiday photo...
I vote for a photo from Switzerland. The Russian choir of Gatchina invited me to help them in a competition with the Italian pronunciation of the test piece, vocal technique and actually sing with them too.
We won the prize for best interpretation of the test piece, and after the ceremony all the girls in the chorus formed a ring around me and started to sing Devitsi Krassavitsi (Beautiful girls) from Tchaikovsky’s opera EvgenyOnegin.
Country with the best cuisine...
Apart from singing, dining is one of the highest-ranking pleasures in my life. Being the son of a patissieur, I was introduced to the culture of fine eating from a very early age.
I like to eat, and if possible, I like to do it in style. Every country I visit, I make it a point to sample the local cuisine and delicacies.
The best fruit I ever enjoyed was in Malaysia. I love their famous durian and hundreds of other exotic fruits we have never heard of in Malta. I’ve also eaten the best and biggest crab ever there.
But the most adventurous of all was in South Korea. I was walking along Pusan beach one evening after a rehearsal, and I bought a glass of fried bee’s thoraxes.
While strolling around, I also noticed quite a few kiosks with lots of small aquariums and an enclosed section for diners.
I was curious, and a Korean guy invited me to try some Soju (an alcoholic drink).
It was great, but then he told the vendor to grab a big live crustacean from the aquarium. I hesitated at first, but then agreed.
All of a sudden the attendant grabbed this live crustacean, dipped it in soy sauce and stuffed it in my mouth. They told me to bite it, and as I did, I saw its tentacles still moving.
But I am still most partial to Italian cuisine. The last time I was in Florence for a vocal master class last January, I also went to a ‘cooking pasta from scratch’ class.
My next holiday plans…
I’ve been planning for years to visit my cousins Arthur and Alexandra in Houston, but now as a student I can’t afford it. When I used to work at ST Microelectronics, before deciding to dedicate all my time to studying singing, I could afford to go to a holiday, though I was restricted by the amount of time I could take off.
I partied hardest in…
Lloret del Mar in Spain. At 6 a.m. after a heavy night I fell asleep on top of a very loud speaker, with the bouncer and my friends checking on me, amazed how anyone could sleep with so much loud noise. I was exhausted after a very full day at Port Aventura theme park, then went to a cabaret show while my friends went to rest, after which I met them in a club. At 6 a.m. I could not take it anymore.
My travel tip…
Don’t go to the flight gate at the last minute, especially in Frankfurt airport. For a travel tip on St Petersburg, about which I know a lot, just leave me a message on my website (www.josephlia.com). I’ll do my best to answer, and it would be nice to meet you there.
Joseph Lia is a baritone who has been studying vocal performance (opera and chamber music), together with vocal pedagogy at the St Petersburg State Conservatory in Russia for the past five years. He won a vocal competition last December in Helsinki, and another one last month in St Petersburg. He is set to become the first ever Maltese graduate of this Conservatory, one of the most prestigious in the world.