I've seen SO MANY churches in Italy, and every time I walk into one I notice something missing. I mean, what is a gorgeous cathedral without some music?
Anyway, I found out that Rebecca, the printmaking professor, sings in a choir every once in awhile. My friend Ashton and I asked if we could sing with her sometime. We waited a couple of weeks, and finally found out that the practice was Wednesday night at 9:15 - and that Rebecca couldn't come. Still determined to go, we wandered into one of Cortona's many churches after dinner and ran into the choir director. Naturally, he didn't speak much English, but I had to explain why we were there: "Siamo studentesse di Rebecca Ghezzi; possiamo cantare?"
We were immediately welcomed in and given seats and sheet music, and I got quite a lot of practice with my Italian. Eventually an Irishman showed up, and all three of us were a little relieved to speak English. And then the singing began! There were around twenty choir members, all with a surprising amount of talent for a community choir, and we sang four-part Italian hymns that echoed across the church. Ashton was sandwiched in the alto section, and I was with the first sopranos (despite my attempts to explain in broken Italian that I've probably lost that range and might have to switch), and every so often we gave each other looks that said "this is crazy cool, right?"
The director (I forget his name! So bad of me...) conducted really loosely, so we kind of had to go with the flow and sing phrase to phrase rather than with the written rhythm, but I think it was nicer that way. He'd stop us occasionally to spit out a stream of rapid Italian corrections, and even though I could only catch about every fifth word I knew pretty much what he was saying: don't breathe here, it's much more beautiful if you sing the whole phrase, and basses you're missing the third note at the bottom, and for God's sakes will the sopranos shut up a bit.
Anyway. The practice went until midnight (!), at which point they told Ashton and I (with our Irish friend translating) to show up at Teatro Signorelli tomorrow at five wearing black pants and a white shirt, because there was a concert to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification.
To make a long story short, we arrived around five wearing borrowed clothing, listened to a lecture about Italy's history and culture (at least I think that's what it was about; I got tired of paying attention to the Italian) for an hour, and then shuffled onstage with our choir friends plus about forty other (rather loud) people to sing "Va, Pensiero" from Verdi's Nabucco and the Italian national anthem. Youtube the national anthem. It's great.
Ashton and I had to run straight from the stage to Tonino's to take a group photo, but we did stop briefly to hi-five each other.
That's my Italian choir experience.
