Hello from Urbania

Hello all! I've finally gotten around to letting you know how its all been going! We are just about to end week one of the course but before I made my way down to the beautiful little town of Urbania I was in Milan for a few days. It was such an incredible experience, and being able to see a performance at La Scala was out of this world!  Though from now on I think I will try and avoid the boxes, sitting on a stool for three hours was not the most comfortable experience in the world. The rest of my time in Milan was filled with all the things a tourist must do in Milan, going to the Duomo do Milano, The Castello Sforzesco, the Crypt of Leondardo, the Arch of Peace and so on. One moment that was pretty special was going into a church hundreds of years old and asking the lovely old man in what evolved into sign language if I could sing in it. I pulled out all of my sacred repertoire, Panis Angelicus and the first half of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus! It was a surreal experience nontheless. 

On the third I headed back out of the city to the airport where I met up with all of the other students and staff of the program. They are from all over the States, with others from Sweden, Canada and Brazil! (I'm probably forgetting someone so sorry!). From there it was a six hour bus trip into Urbania, which is where we are based for the next month and a half! It is a wonderful town which plays host to Centro Studi Italiani, the language school where we spend our mornings. Our teacher doesn't speak any English during lessons, and there are only nine of us in the class so its nice and small. The afternoons and evenings are then focused on the coaching of scenes and and individual sessions with the coaches who are all fantastic, obviously. The scenes that I am in are fantastic because I get to sing repertoire from Monteverdi (l'incoronazione di Poppea) and Cavalli (L'Egisto) to Donizetti (Lucia) and Verdi! (The brindisi from La Traviata, give me strength!!) 

On Sunday we head out to Firenze for the day, and we have a masterclass with Chris Merritt tonight that I am singing in, so needless to say after day one all is going well! 

Also I can't put photos on here for some silly reason on my IPad, so if you head over to my Instagram (the little camera image in the top right) you can find some there!

Until next time, because who knows when that will be,

Harry