Italian Choral Programme - Verona

25th July 2025 | Written by Isaac (2nd Tenor)

Verona. Second-largest city of the Veneto region, setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the third city of our choral journey. After a slightly rocky morning of travel (belligerent taximan, broken air-con) we emerge into another beautiful sunny day from Porta Nuova Station. The city is a relief in more ways than one — mercifully temperate after the relentless heat of Rome, for one thing. But it also has a character distinct from our first two destinations. Where Florence feels like an enchanting open-air art museum, everything beautiful and elegant but always poised and ready for the visiting tourist, Verona has a more subtle beauty, lived-in and unpretentious. Where Rome is an incredible, sprawling mass of history and culture, thronging with every kind of visitor and pulsing with hectic energy, Verona has a relaxed and uncrowded atmosphere, with her Italian denizens mingling in the streets in near-equal number to the tourists, who wander not in great clustered tour groups or pilgrim bands but in romantic couples linked arm in arm, or in family groups held hand-in-hand.

Our stay in Verona serves an important restive function for the group — now halfway through the trip, and having achieved such musical heights while in Rome, we enjoy some well-earned free time to rest, explore, and continue deepening the friendships that have emerged during our time together. The medieval streets of the Città Antica are a real pleasure to walk; they fall in relaxed but well-ordered gridlines that echo the Roman military settlement which stood here in the first century BC. While not omnipresent as in Rome, the legacy of the Romans is still to be found across the city — looming large at the heart of the historic center is the Arena, the third-largest Roman amphitheater remaining in Italy and one of the best-preserved. For 2000 nearly-uninterrupted years it has been the site of spectacle and entertainment, from gladiator battles to jousts, bull-hunts to trials by combat; today, it hosts concerts and sporting events of all kinds, and most famously is the largest outdoor opera venue in the world.

Some of us seek out the Casa di Giulietta, a medieval tower-house dating from the mid-fourteenth century which was mistakenly associated with the Capelletti family, on whom the Bard based his Capulets; it features a specially-crafted balcony of red marble in the inner courtyard, evoking the play’s most famous scene. A bronze statue of Juliet, standing in the courtyard below the balcony, is the most visited monument in the city.

Our first afternoon ends as most days with dinner together — pizza, in a restaurant looking out over the Piazza Brà towards the Arena. The next day promises more free time, but also an end to our streak of good weather. A number of us have decided to make a short day trip west to the southern shore of Lake Garda, the largest lake in Italy and a gateway into the Italian Alps, with intent to wash off the last remaining vestiges of the heat of Rome. A few intrepid souls set off in the pre-dawn twilight to catch the earliest trains possible; others follow in due course on later services. Despite threatening gray clouds and intermittent droplets, we manage to enjoy some swimming and cavorting in the lake before the rains come more forcefully in the early afternoon. For those not visiting the lake, Verona has more to offer — some visit Castelvecchio, built in the 14th century, and its companion bridge, whose three arches at the time of its construction featured the largest span in the world at nearly 50 meters in length each.

As evening approaches the group recongregates at the Chiesa di San Nicolò all’Arena, a 17th-century Baroque parish church stood just behind the Arena. We are privileged to sing for a Mass presided by the Bishop; by now we are all more confident in the liturgy, and our offering of plainchant and polyphony is once again warmly received by our generous hosts. After the service concludes, we enjoy a picnic, accompanied by prosecco, in the lovely, quiet piazza in front of the church. Once we’ve eaten, we make our way back towards the Arena for a truly special experience — attending a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata. Sat on the pitted, millennia-old marble, we enjoy a performance of musical mastery, high drama, spectacular stage design, and unforgettable atmosphere — a truly memorable capstone to our time in Verona. The opera’s heroine safely and melodramatically deceased, we make our way back to the hotel to sleep. Tomorrow, east to Venice.

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Isaac (2nd Tenor)