Where to start?? On Wednesday, we woke up early and took the hour long bus ride to Florence’s sister city, Siena. We got a bit of a late start to the day and we were to be at the Duomo by 9:30 am to sing the 10 am mass. Sadly, we didn’t pull into the outskirts of Siena until about 9:40, and, with its extremely narrow streets, we were forced to park quite a distance from the cathedral. So, we agreed to let the choristers and professional singers off the bus first to book it up the hill to shorten the 15 minute walk to a 10 minute morning jog. We just made it, sweaty (it’s 100 degrees here, after all) and out of breath. In fact, we walked into the door at 9:55, gathered ourselves enough to get the music organized, and immediately began singing the introit to mass. It was not a big crowd (we no doubt raised their average daily mass attendance by 50) but the voices of the choir resounded through the vast space with the greatest of beauty. The Duomo in Siena is a spectacular edifice. With its striped marble, incredible frescoes, and immense collection of illuminated choir books, it was very difficult to leave. But the streets of Siena were calling, and, I’l be honest, so was the gelato…there just are not words to describe the beauty of Siena, so I will leave it to you all to make sure you visit this village at some point in your lifetime. It will change your life.
Thursday provided the travelers thier first and only completely free day on the trip. Some chose to take the day off or to shop, some chose to climb the towers of Florence, and some others (like my family and me) visited what is arguably the world’s finest museum – the Uffizi. The line starts to wrap around the museum about an hour before it opens at 8:15. Let me tell you – it is worth the wait. In fact, I personally have been waiting to see the Uffizi since my Art History class in grad school. It seemed like every slide on the screen was a picture one could see in Florence. The Uffizi houses some of the most pivotal and influential pieces of art ever created. One could spend days there if not a lifetime, but I found myself overloaded with emotion from the art I saw there. In so many ways, these collections of art affected me as music does – one can’t help but be moved to another reality when experiencing masterpieces like this. It’s inspiring, transformative, and overwhelming. An absolutely amazing opportunity for those that went.
Duomo in Orvieto
Today, we said a fond farewell to Florence (some didn’t want to leave!) and made our way to Rome via a lovely mountain-top Tuscan village, Orvieto. The cathedral that sits at the center of this town is yet another masterpiece of Italian architecture. Yet another. Somehow it doesn’t get tiring seeing one architectural or visual wonder after another. One could stare at the west front of the Duomo for hours and the frescoes in the chapel there rival those in the Sistene Chapel. Throughout the village as a whole, there are lovely shops and little restaurants, a great way to spend an afternoon.
We have now arrived at our hotel in Rome – a nice place in a great location. Tomorrow we rehearse a bit and then head to the Vatican for our tour of the museum and the Sistene Chapel there. Maybe we should just call this tour the Choir of Men and Boys renaissance art tour…not a bad thing, I suppose!
Take good care, everyone back in Grosse Pointe.
Scott
Photos courtesy of RobinMPhotography
