For our last full day of the trip, we had an amazing visit to Venice! I’ve spent the entire trip looking forward to Venice due to its canals, gorgeous waterfront views, and stunning architecture, and it more than lived up to my expectations. Venice is only accessible by boat or rail (it’s built on several islands), so we rode a bus to a ferry station near Venice and got to ride a ferry into the city! It was a gorgeous day with a clear blue sky, so it was perfect weather to see the town in despite it being hot (about 90 degrees Fahrenheit).
Once we were in Venice, we began with a guided tour of an art museum called Gallerie dell’Accademia. The gallery houses tons of Venetian masterworks, and it played a significant role in cultural preservation when it saved artwork from churches that were shut down during Napoleon’s reign. The most famous artwork in the gallery is Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but due to its fragility, they do not display it for the public except on special occasions. After we toured the gallery, our guide led us around the city some more on a scenic walk to Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square). The square is the main square of Venice and is called “la Piazza” by locals, and its namesake is the massive Basilica di San Marco (St. Mark’s Basilica). St. Mark’s Basilica dates back to 1094 AD, though a prior structure was built nearly two centuries prior. As is the case with St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, St. Mark’s Basilica holds a tomb containing St. Mark’s body. Unlike St. Peter’s Basilica, however, St. Mark’s was not built around the assumed burial place of Peter. In the 800s, Venetian merchants successfully smuggled St. Mark’s preserved remains from Alexandria, Egypt, and brought them back to Venice (the truth of this story is up to the reader’s interpretation).
Unfortunately, due to long lines, I did not have time to go inside St. Mark’s, but the outside is just as amazing. In addition to St. Mark’s global appeal, St. Mark’s has immense choral significance that I want to discuss. Part of St. Mark’s design is that its halls form a cross, with one long hall and two shorter domed areas out to the sides. There are lofts in each of these domes, and choir directors (maestri di cappella) at St. Mark’s faced a conundrum: where do they put the choir? Over time, composers such as Willaert, de Rore, and Monteverdi employed at the church began to write music for two choirs, with one choir situated in each loft! Choral singers reading this are well aware of “double choir” pieces from other more recent composers like Mendelssohn and Brahms, but the reason the double choir exists was to meet the spatial needs of St. Mark’s Basilica! Seeing the church in person after learning about it in Choral Literature last fall was amazing.
In the afternoon, I walked the streets of Venice with a few other singers, did some souvenir shopping, and tried to take in as much as possible in our limited time there. Venice is full of famous buildings, but with the canals cutting through the streets covered by gondola boats, there is immense beauty on every corner. We reconvened in St. Mark’s Square at 5:30 to walk to our ferry and head back to the bus. After a farewell dinner, we sang a few more pieces in the hotel lobby to close out the evening! Seeing Venice was the perfect way to end the trip! I wish we’d had more time there, and our guide joked that her goal was to get us to come back. Getting to perform Mozart’s Requiem in such gorgeous Italian churches and getting to see Rome, Florence, Venice, and smaller gems such as San Gimignano has been a wonderful experience that I won’t soon forget. As I type this, I’m killing time in the Venice airport before an afternoon flight back to Louisville with one stop in Chicago in between. Thank you so much for letting me share this journey with you, and please pray for my and the other musicians’ safe travels back to the States!
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