“I’ve had enough of this
relationship,” said the young Italian girl, grumpily. “All the romance is
gone.”
“But darling,” insisted her
paramour. “What could be more romantic? It is midnight on the Ponte Vecchio, in
beautiful moonlight, and …”
“Oh my giddy aunt, you’ve even
hired a choir!” exclaimed the girl. “What an effort! You shall now proceed to
second base.”
At least, this is how I like
to imagine the conversation went when the London Oriana Choir sneaked up behind
a canoodling couple on Florence’s most famous bridge, and burst into “If Ye
Love Me”. We serenaded them mercilessly before melting away into the night like
singing ninjas. And we didn’t stop there.
We proceeded on round the
sleeping city like a stealth choir, filling the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti
with beautiful drunken sound for the benefit of two surprised American
tourists. We were aiming for the famous Boboli Gardens, but on finding the gate
closed we had to settle for the next nearest patch of grass, which happened to
be the roundabout in the middle of the Piazza Romana.
The occasional car tooted as
we wailed our way through the introduction to Bob Applebaum’s Witches Song.
“Roundabout, roundabout, the
traffic goes….”
We shrieked as one of our
party climbed the modernist statue in the middle of the traffic island (which, weirdly,
was a statue of someone planking on someone else’s head), we shushed each other
even more loudly than we shrieked, and the neighbours finally had enough and
called the police.
Several of us scarpered like
cockroaches as the police car pulled up, leaving those too drunk to move to
carry the can. Colin-the-tenor, with impressive sang-froid, wandered across to
them with a bottle of wine tucked elegantly in his top pocket.
“What would the police in your
country do at this point?” asked the lovely Italian policeman.
“They’d ask us to go home
now,” said Colin, cleverly avoiding the “they’d arrest us” pitfall, but missing
a golden opportunity to ask the police for a lift to the nearest off-licence.
So hey ho, another Oriana foreign
tour, another brush with the police. I’m sure there’s something else important
about this tour that I should include in the blog, though. What could it be? Oh yes of course, that’s right, we also did a
couple of concerts.
We sang in the Duomo in San
Gimignano, a really beautiful church with a deeply resonant acoustic, and then
were lucky enough to also sing in Santo Spirito church in Florence, just round
the corner from the Ponte Vecchio. Two
really amazing venues, and I’m pleased to say we did them both proud with
plenty (and I do mean plenty) of fantastic music.
In fact, I shall always
remember this tour for being the only time, in my whole history with Oriana,
that I have heard the following phrase pass David-the-Conductor’s lips (and I
warn all stalwart Orianites to sit down before you read this, it’s a shocker):
“There’s too much music. We’ll have to drop some pieces.”
Stagger. Seriously, David-let’s-squeeze-in-another-encore-Drummond
was beseeching US to drop some music. It
was very true though, we had folders-full of sheet music riotously bouncing
through the golden Tuscan sunrises. At
our pre-tour rehearsal, David had announced his intention to sing through all
the pieces on his tentative list and decide which ones to take and which to
leave. Well, you can guess what
happened. Every single piece made it on
to the list, despite some of us (okay, one of me) loudly shouting “NO!” to
everything. (I confess I’d accidentally had a glass of wine before rehearsal,
and may not have been in my soberest state).
But we sing so much wonderful
music, and every piece had ardent fans fighting for its inclusion. So, in yet another demonstration of why
democracy is a flawed system of rule, on tour came pretty much every piece we’ve
sung over the last five years. And we
determinedly whittled our way through them.
We sang Allain’s “Christ’s Love Song”, even though there were barely
enough of us for one to a part. We
sightread our way through Kats-Chernin’s fearsome “Stabat Mater” (at least, I
did). We made up the words to Orban’s
“Daemon”, deciding a prudent focus on getting the right notes would serve us
better than worrying about correct diction.
(“Just sing anything vaguely Latin-sounding, no-one will know”, we
agreed, entirely forgetting that we were in Italy.) And we soared through our best rendition ever
of Whitacre’s “Leonardo Dreams”.
Old time Oriana favourites by
Byrd, Tallis and Purcell also made it in to both programmes, and we sang them
superbly. Tallis’ “If Ye Love Me (plank
on my head)” became the symbol of Florence, at least for me. And I can’t think of a more beautiful piece
for a more beautiful city, or a more beautiful choir. (In sound, anyway!) It was a fabulous tour, and I’d like to thank
each and every one of my tour compadres for making it so. In fact, I think we should go on tour again
right away. Who’s up for a trip to
Spaghetti Junction?
