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Published: July 15th 2010
Up on the roof
of the Duomo in Milan. Beautiful!Up this morning to tour the Duomo of Milan. From the outside it looks pretty impressive, but when you get up onto the roof, my god. It's an amazing opportunity to explore gothic architecture (and I am in _love_with gothic architecture). We got to the first landing and saw the buttresses and I was in heaven, in spite of the sweltering heat. Each corbel is decorated slightly differently, each buttress has slightly different nature patterns dependent on the desires of the carver. There are something like 2200 carved statues of saints, apostles, prophets, and other figures all over the church. It was amazing. Had it not been so bloody hot, I could easily have spent well more time up there.
SM and I ventured into the Cathedral itself to check it out, and in spite of the fact that one can easily get 'churched out' in Europe, I'm glad we did. There was some beautiful stained glass, amazing carvings, a brilliant sculpture of a saint who'd been flayed, holding his own skin... Yes, I know, I'm morbid. There was also the shrine of St. (Cardinal) Borromeo, which was probably the most intricate I've seen yet. Experiencing that led to an
interesting discussion about the need (or not) for physical ... contact, I guess might be the right word, with religion. Forgive me a philosophical moment here, but I'm beginning to wonder if history might not be my religion - open to interpretation, but I believe it happened - and my contact with the buildings, documents, etc from the past roughly the equivalent of the veneration of saints' relics...? Anyway...
SM and I wandered back to the hotel, and because we were in Milan, stopped in the stores along the way. My resolve to not shop for clothes was temporarily weakened, and I did end up purchasing a silk skirt that I absolutely adore. When in Milan, do as the Milanese, right? I'm honestly glad we didn't have more time in Milan, because I'm not a shopper to begin with, and really don't have the money to buy the things that I saw that were really nice. And hell, some of the stores I felt too scrubby and low-class to even walk into. Suddenly Holt Renfrew doesn't seem so bad.
Having eaten naught much but Italian for the last 2 weeks, S and I were thrilled to find a
Outside the church
of St Peter the Martyr, in which we sang, in Monza. take-away curry place, so ate at the bar there. Lovely chat over chicken curry and a Cobra.
We picked up our concert stuff at the hotel, and headed back into city centre to try and make our appointment to see The Last Supper. Yes. _The_ the Last Supper. I wasn't sure what to expect, but of all the art I've seen in my life (and this includes a lot of super-famous pieces now), I think this was my best experience. The fact that we had a guide certainly helped. The experience of getting to see the painting is interesting to begin with. The place is so tightly controlled, both in terms of traffic and environment that you essentially go through a series of airlocks where the next set of doors doesn't open to let you through until the last set has closed. When you finally get in, the painting dominates the one end of the room, but dominates may be too strong a word. It just seems like an integral part of the room, and as our guide pointed out, was designed to sort of give the feeling of continuity and expansion to the room, as though Jesus and his disciples were there with you. The expressions on each person's face are so amazing and unique... And when compared to the fresco at the other end of the room, you can certainly see how the styles in art were changing drastically. It was and experience that I was skeptical about bothering with, but am so glad we went!
From The Last Supper we hopped on the bus to Monza, where we were greeted by the organizers of our concert. We stopped to dump some of our stuff and get drinks, then headed out for a walking tour of the town and its cathedral. It was quite interesting, the church having been there in some form since the early middle ages, and the town was supercute. It was unfortunate that we didn't have more time there.
Our concert turned out to be part of a festival celebrating both music and the architecture of cloisters, in which various concerts by various groups were held in various cloisters around the town. We were the finale, and performed in the heat (it was still 33 degrees at 12:30 am when we were returning to our hotel) and mosquito infestation (my legs look like I have the plague or something, and they itch like the devil now, in spite of the bug spray), but apparently it looked lovely in spite of the environmental conditions.
As for our music... I had been coughing and snuffling during rehearsal, and was seriously afraid I wasn't going to make it through the concert. I strategically hid a water bottle and plotted how to exit discreetly if I had a coughing fit, but surprisingly I made it through. Certainly not singing at full voice, but nevertheless, made it through. The small group doing the Renaissance music sounded better than they have _ever_ sounded - they were almost ethereal. As for the larger group things, they also went fabulously. With the exception of some continuing word memorization issues in some of the pieces, we were on fire. I think this is the first time we haven't been scared about our pieces, and it's fabulous. The audience loved us, and there was actually a fairly full house, which was really neat.
After the concert we headed to dinner arranged for us at a local bar, overlooking a river in the city. Good conversation, good food, good wine... And of course we were all still on a bit of a concert high. I felt like I had more energy than I've had in a while now, I think my cold has broken!
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