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 Incantato Tours organized an amazing choir tour to Italy during the summer of 2008, and I was able to join up with the CSULB Chamber Choir, directed by Prof. Jonathan Talberg. It was was my fourth time to Italy, and my fourth choir tour, and it was truly excellent. Without a camera this time I was able to just wander, sing, walk, eat and experience everything, and I am grateful to Bob and Carolee Luthi for letting me use their pictures for this page. We started in Maiori, on the Amalfi Coast, and then worked our way up to Rome and then Florence, performing Carmina Burana twice and then our own concerts. The absolute pinnacle of the tour was performing at the Vatican, first singing for the High Mass in St.Peter's Basilica, and then singing inside |
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the Sistine Chapel after a private tour of the Vatican Museums, with a professor of art history.It was my first visit to the Vatican and will stay with me for the rest of my life - imagine singing inside a cathedral that has the capacity to seat 75,000 people. . . The artwork, history and humanity of the whole place was staggering, from the Pieta to the waxen remains of a dead pope in a glass case. Didn't get a picture of that one, but well, it's something you kind of have to see to believe. We also did an impromptu performance inside the Pantheon in Rome, immediately surrounded by hundreds of moist-eyed people as soon as we started singing. The only source of light inside this amazing 2000-year old structure is the round portal at the very top which lets a huge shaft of sunlight inside. We gathered in a ring around the circle of sunlight on the marble floor, and this memory also stays with me. On occasion rose petals have been dropped through the Pantheon's portal to fall down the shafts of sunlight, and you can't imagine what this does to my imagination. |
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