Diane’s Trips

Lucca has a well-preserved Renaissance wall encircling its historic city center and its cobblestone streets.

The streets are lined with lovely shops and restaurants which offer regional specialties such as boar stew with polenta, deep fried cow’s brains and salted cod or pork with potatoes.

A highlight of my day was touring Casa di Puccini, the home where the great opera composer was born and lived until he completed his studies at the Musical Institute of Lucca in 1880. It was full of treasures such as personal letters, photographs, a musical sketch of La Bohem, his Steinway and Sons piano on which he composed Turandot and costumes from some of his most famous Operas.

I simply could not imagine how enormous the churches in Lucca would be for such a small town. I really appreciate how cool these sanctuaries were after battling 34C temps all day. After yesterday’s concerts, in Lucca, our director said he was “inundated by effusive compliments about our performances.”

Emile’s sister, Josie, flew from London to spend the day with him and attend both our concerts to hear the choir sing his composition, Laudate Dominus.

Denis gave an exquisite surprise performance, at Chiesa di San Michele in Foro, of classical guitar and dazzled both the choir and our audiences.

These concerts take a technical team to set up tv monitors; between the organ and the conductor‘s podium, and the video and sound equipment used to record our performances. We are grateful to Preston & Alex and others for all their efforts.👏👏

Margaret, our organist, must also set up all the stops and make adjustment before, during, and after our rehearsal according to the different pipe requirements and sound delay in each church. I took a short video of Margaret preparing for our 9 pm concert in Cattedrale di San Martini. Our audiences love Margaret’s skillful playing as much as we do.👏👏👏

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Florence is the birth place of the Renaissance art and architecture. One of its most iconic sights is the Duomo, a cathedral with a terracotta-tiled dome which took 6 centuries to build. The 1 hr. lines and the 38C temp🥵 prevented me from going inside.😔

Today was Gallery Day and I visited both the Galleria dell’Accademia which displays Michelangelo’s towering “David” sculpture and the Uffizi Gallery exhibits of Botticelli’s famous “The Birth of Venus” and “Primavera“. The gift shops all had varying sizes and colours of Big D’s and little D’s which helped me better proportion David’s hand size.

The Ponte Vecchio is a medieval stone arch bridge, built in 1345, over the dirty brown Arno River. There are very expensive jewellery shops, art dealers and souvenir sellers built along it. As I crossed the bridge I was humming “O Mio Babbino Caro” and thinking a leap off of this bridge likely would not prove fatal.

I sampled Aperol, the honey and orange -coloured Florentine aperitif.

The birth of modern gelato dates back to Sicily in the Middle Ages but Florence, in the 16th century, helped share this dessert with France. Caterina de Midici was so in love with the fruits, sugar and ice dessert that she took her personal gelato maker to France with her and the rest, as they say is history. 🥰

Cartona is well situated on a hilltop and so I thought I’d share some of the stairs I climbed with you.

🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨

14 flavours down 136 left:)

Today’s concert was held in the Basilica of the town’s saint, Margherita. Her mummified body was on full view in a glass coffin. This is my first ever concert where a dead person was situated directly behind the choir, next to the altar.

There was 6 second echo which meant we had to look at the conductor more than once during the concert.😉

The parish Brother & Sister were in attendance but she was on her cell phone texting for the first 1/2 hr of our concert. I hope she was talking to the Pope!😡

The view from this church is panoramic as the road to get to it is terrifyingly steep, winding and narrow. Once again Leo the Magician got us up and down safely.

The food is fresh, colourful, flavourful and picture worthy.

We arrived in Arezzo just as the heat wave began and temperatures soared to 3O+C.

Thankfully the Romanesque church, Santa Maria della Pieve, we sang in was lovely and cool. I was so surprised how high the dome was in this all stone structure.

We delivered our concert from the balcony right next to the pipe organ which apparently can overheat and “explode” according to the church organist. 🥴The only explosion I witnessed was Leo, our tour manager, using his best Italian expressions and gestures to ensure our show went on with the organ blazing!! Poor Margaret had two anxious & ticked-off men hovering over her while she played. She has earned the nickname, “Boom Bang”, and several glasses of wine after that stressful and flawless performance. Bravo!!!

Tuscany is beautiful and our hilltop hotel has a stunning panoramic view of the towns and vineyards below.

I awoke at 6:30am, flung my shutters and French doors open to the sun shining and birds (thousands of swallows) singing love songs!!

Everything is so perfect here, this must be paradise or the closest I’ve come to it. #heavenonearth

Sorry I’m having difficulty with downloading pictures as the internet signals are very weak. I’ll try at our next stop, Florence.

Perched high on a rocky hill sits Orvieto over looking the lush hillside and vineyards. They call Umbria the “Green Heart” of Italy. Our conductor, Lars, took us to the ramparts to show us the great view of the countryside.

The Duomo di Orvieto is a spectacular 13th century Catholic Church which has one of the liveliest mosaic facades I’ve ever seen. It has four large marble bas reliefs which depict the gospel stories. Inside there are many well preserved frescoes and a superb sculpture, La Pietà o Deposizione by Ippolito Scalza.

We had a full day wandering through the narrow cobblestone roads, browsing through artisan shops (ceramics, weaving, jewellery, wine, linens), eating, singing, eating and drinking the region’s delicious 🍷!!

Before and after the concert we performed, our secular repertoire, in the Plaza in front of the church. It was a fun way to begin and end our visit to this charming oasis.

It was fitting to get one last glimpse of the Colosseum on our way to enjoying a delicious dinner and wine.

Georgie is our wonderful and extremely capable tour director. He deals with everything from medical emergencies, room assignments, missing persons, public transportation inquiries, location of toilets and much more. He is on faculty at Capilano University, a member of the Vancouver Chamber Choir and sings Bass and 2nd Tenor in our choir. Also seated at the table is Dr. Wendy the Cap U Music Department Coordinator who sings in our Alto section.

Today we met our tour manager, Leandro, who will travel with us to Venice. He is our interpreter, coordinator for performances, tour guide in each city we visit, and he knows all the best places to eat pizza and gelato!

This morning I did a walkabout in the hood and decided on the perfect photo to salute our time in Rome.

If you guessed gelato you are wrong-gelato is strictly for eating immediately!

Orvieto ready or not the Cap U Singers are coming to a church near you. 💒🎶

To reach the Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli you first climb 124 steps unless you find a back entrance with about 30 steps. 😉 In this “chandelier” church we sang 6 pieces acapella for the mass.

There was a Sunday wedding just before our performance which is most unusual. There were 20 clergy plus a Bishop officiating the ceremony. It is my guess that these families have friends in high places-the Vatican perhaps? 👰

I had the best ever melon and prosciutto platter for lunch.

It was so hot that many of us took the bus to Sant’Agnese in Agone where our next concert was scheduled. The church is small but the acoustics were outstanding!! We had a audience of several hundred people (standing room only). We received a standing ovation from our generous and enthusiastic audience.

Today’s flavours were dark chocolate and mint 🍨!

Our first concert in Chiesa di Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola was a challenge due to the 5+ second sound delay and reverberation.

Our organist, Margaret, played brilliantly and the organ sounded magnificent.

This Baroque style church was a great showcase for Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Emile’s lovely composition, Laudate Dominus, had it’s international debut!

Today we are performing at 10:30am and 2:30pm.

Margaret and I were packed in like sardines riding the metro to tour Villa Borghese. The walk through the park was a good 45 mins.

The collection of works (paintings & sculptures) by two renaissance art giants; Caravaggio and Bellini, took my breath away!!

Returning from the Villa we watched 1,000’s of workers stage a protest. There was a large presence of police on hand and so we decided to make a hasty retreat.

The exterior of the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore is unassuming but the interior is gorgeous. We enjoyed an organ recital.

The Italian waiter didn’t want to bring parmigiano-reggiano for my spaghetti vongole. I insisted and he said “Italians never put cheese on pasta with fish” but I’m Canadian and we put cheese on our cereal!!😜

I have a new goal and that is to taste all 150 gelato flavours before I leave 🇮🇹!!