5/20/12 Singing at St. Peter's

        An early morning.  I awoke at 6 am for a shower with no alarm to wake me up.  Another fabulous buffet breakfast, though there were an obvious lack of napkins in case someone wanted to sneak some of the food out...
        We set out early to return to the Vatican, only this time to sing in mass, not to do the usual touristy stuff.  There was a long line out in the Piazza leading into the Bascilica proper-took about an hour to get through.  Once we made it back inside St. Peter's, there is a significantly smaller population inside than the day before, though it was still far from empty.  We were directed to the main altar's choir section, and the view from there is so much better than anyplace else inside.  You can see the organs, the statue of St. Peter, a very close Main Altar, and the center piece clearly and distinctly.

We're sweating in our pews

        Onto the performance of mass.  I've never attended a Catholic mass in another language before, and let me say, it's about as exciting as it is in English (sorry to religious folks, I mean no offense).  But to sing in the very place Palestrina and MonteVerdi composed for, well, that's 500 years worth of history right there, being relived.  The sound in that space is remarkable, considering its size and how much crap is in it, doubled with the fact our choir is about 23 people strong, we were still able to easily fill up the space without a long obnoxious reverb or distortion.  By and far, this was one of the best moments of my life. The music really felt as if it had been divinely inspired and executed.  To put it simply, there is no other place like it in the world, visually, or aurally.  We sung Sitivit Anime Mea, O Sacrum con Viveum, Cantante Domino, Ubi Caritas, and Surge Cantante.  A fantastic set of music.
        To further reward our performance experience and how well we sounded, our Maestro decided to buy lunch for all of us- can't pass up free pizza!  Then back to the bus and off to our historical tour of Italy with our favorite guide Daniella and her assistant Popino.
        --On a side note, when you see SPQR labelled on something, it's what the Romans would stamp to say (roughly translated from Latin) "from the Senate to the people of Rome."

Generic Colosseum picture

        Well, the one building most people think when they consider ancient Rome is the Colosseum.  Such was our first stop on the tour.  The origins of the building are amusing, considering it was built smack dab ontop of a very early emperor's palace, Emperor Nero to be exact (the whole hillside of the area was), so that the people of Rome could forget what a jerk he was.  So another emperor to curry favor with his people built the Colosseum in 5 years.  Five years for a building that is larger than anything in Pocatello-and probably Idaho too, and over 2000 years ago!  I will say that the building, to me, is only interesting with people who have a vested interest in ancient history or those who have very good imaginations.  As our tour guide had told us before, Rome loves to recycle its marble.  And the Colosseum at one point was entirely covered in the stuff.  After thousands of years, it had been harvested completely through, leaving only the remains as you see them today.  Outside of the building there used to be a giant bronze statue of the emperor who built the place, one that was almost as tall as the building itself, and was named "colosei" hence the building's name.  The other fun fact is that the Colosseum is centered around the 7 sacred hills of Rome, making it ideal for tours.

That used to be a building for Mast Heads of defeated ships

        The last stop for our tour was the oldest section of Rome- the Forum.  A good city block of ruins was discovered sometime in the last decade that they are slowly excavating.  Yes, even in this day and age, we are still unearthing artifacts and rewriting our textbooks about all of this.  It had started to rain, couple that with an exahsted group who just sang at the Vatican, and most of us seemed to be worn out for this portion of the tour.  I remember Daniella describing that this was the most important place in Rome for the longest time, and that the tomb of Caesar Augustus was there, the first and only Caesar to be deified.  There is also the third and final Arch here ( there are three Archs, 2 outside the Colosseum, and 1 in the Forum.  There used to be over 30 of them in Rome, but time has removed all but 3).  This arch though I find the most interesting because it is so early in the Roman days that they still found the concepts of "pants" (from the Barbarians) to be humorous.  We head up and out of the hills to a small piazza where a bronze statue of Caesar Augustus stood (overlooked by Christians who thought it was the first Christian emperor of Rome, hence why it wasn't harvested).  As well as a statue of Minerva, sided by two statues of the gods of the Tiber (local branch of the Tiber in Rome is called the Blonde Tiber) and the Nile.  These were the two most important rivers of the ancient world to the Romans, so ya.  Then down the other side of the steps was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier again, small city!
        We head back on the bus, give a sad farewell to our friend Daniella, and head back to the hotel.  Everyone in our group (I swear) all took a nap that evening.  I awoke around 9pm to grab dinner.  The problem was, after 9 on a Sunday in the Catholic homeland, most places are closed.  Well the group I was with and I were able to find a place to sit down and eat.  It was at a trendy Euro resteraunt that fit the stereotype-electric blue lighting, modern art hanging on the walls, trendy discotech music playing, fasionable staff, and delicious food on fantastic dishes.  Ya, was a good way to end the night.