Rome’s Piazza del Popolo must surely be one of the most effective entrances to the historic centre of any world capital city. Its ovoid shape, reminiscent of saint Peter’s square, its combination of urban landscape and the Pincio hill, its treasure house of a church, Santa Maria del Popolo with Raphael and Caravaggio among the artists who contributed to its beautification, the two smaller domed Santa Maria churches dividing the three main straight roads into the heart of Rome, the obelisk in the piazza’s centre and the now-traffic-free area makes the piazza del Popolo (named, incidentally from poplar trees and not necessarily from ‘people’.) absolutely unforgettable.
The three streets leading off the piazza are Via di Ripetta which leads to the majestic altar of Augustus I’ve described in my post at https://longoio3.com/?s=ara+pacis, the Corso, Rome’s high street, which once was used for horse racing during the carnival so vividly musically depicted in Berlioz’ piece from his opera ‘Benvenuto Cellini’, and the Via del Babuino which leads to the Spanish steps. (Why Spanish? It’s because they lead to the Spanish embassy to the Holy See).
Again, we are at another supremely iconic Roman piazza. Here is where Peck took a blossoming Hepburn on a Vespa (without crash helmet…). Here is the centre of the ‘foreign quarter’, especially of the English, as Babington’s tea rooms proclaim. Here is the last view John Keats sadly ever saw in his life from the house which is now an immaculately kept memorial both to England’s most sensuous poet and to its most lyrical – Shelley.
The Spanish steps are a poignant mixture of joy and sadness and are always full of the youth from the four corners of the world. But beware of using these steps for doing anything else than photographing and embracing each other. Rome has now (rightly) a strong policy against eating and drinking on its many delightful steps.
Last time I was at the Spanish steps I tripped over and twisted my ankle descending them. This time round I climbed up this gorgeous ascent to be greeted by another of the eternal city’s timeless views bathed in brilliant late sunshine.
From the pretty church on top there’s the start of a fourth street running inexorably rectilinearly, despite the presence of one of Rome’s legendary hills (the Quirinal) in its centre – so it’s almost a roller-coaster ride. (PS Rome’s seven hills are the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, and Viminal but NOT the Janiculum).
The via Sistina leads into the Via delle quattro fontane with, at its crossing with the via del Quirinale (the home of Italy’s president and whose exquisite gardens are only open once a year – must try to be there at least once in my life), the genially eccentric baroque architect Borromini’s miniature masterpiece San Carlo alle quattro fontane (AKA San Carlino). The quattro fontane are delightful. Two represent the Tiber and its tributary the Anio. Two represent the goddesses Diana and Juno. Unfortunately, San Carlino was closed so I must leave its mathematically complex interior to another time.
Happily, we in Lucca have a similar architectural example of squaring the oval with the recently restored church of San Caterina (see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/luccas-baroque-flower-blossoms-anew/ for that).
Where did the Via delle Quattro fontane take me? Why, to one of Rome’s four great basilicas (and, in my opinion, the most beautiful), Santa Maria Maggiore! Outside the basilica seems a later baroque masterpiece but all those scrolls and pediments are used to enclose a casket of exquisite beauty – a rare example of what a fifth century early Christian church looks like.
And why should I reach the basilica by 8 pm in a quickly falling Roman dusk. And why should there be around so many ‘top’ (as the Italians call VIPs), including ambassadors and Rome’s mayor? Why of course: to hear my old university’s choir of King’s College Cambridge sing in a concert as part of the sixteenth international festival of music and sacred art.
This was the programme the choir sang:
It would be superfluous to say that it sang excellently. In particular, the English pieces were superlatively resonant in the astonishingly good acoustics of Santa Maria Maggiore.
As an encore the choir sang (unsurprisingly, particularly since we are in Rome) Allegri’s Miserere in a somewhat abbreviated version, but still including the stratospheric soprano ‘volatura’ (which some say was added later).
I was stunned by the setting. Used to hearing this archetypal Anglican tradition choir in the choir stalls of their usual regal setting I was amazed at how effective the sound was in the setting of an ancient Christian basilica with wonderful mosaics in the apse. Perhaps it was also due to the fact that both King’s College Chapel and Santa Maria Maggiore have a strong rectangular shape. Kings chapel is 289 feet long, 39 feet wide and 80 feet tall and Santa Maria Maggiore is 302 feet long, 98 feet wide (but this includes the aisles, lacking in King’s) and the height of its magnificent coffered ceiling is not much less than that of Kings.
In all their finery the crema della crema of Roman society was there. They seemed quite dumbfounded by the incredibly high standards of English church singing as distinct from their own and the choir received a standing ovation before it finally filed out as normally as ever.
Unfortunately it was strictly forbidden to record or take pictures but I managed towards the end to slip these in without flash of course. Undoubtedly, however, there will be many official photographs readily available.
I regret to say that not much has happened to make the average basilican church choirs of Rome rise much higher than the remark I heard from a BBC radio 3 producer of an excellent series in the 1980’s called the ‘Octave of the nativity’ when he was unable to use as an example of the Mass as it might have been conducted in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, in 1613 the present Sistine chapel choir since it was considered ‘unworthy of being recorded. That was 31 December 1984 and not much seems to have changed in that direction.
Of course, period instrumental interpretation of Italian music by Italians like Fabio Biondi and our own Carlo Ipata has all but superseded many tamer English versions of such a repertoire but I can think of very few decent Italian church choirs, although nearby Lucca Cathedral’s Coro delle cappella di Santa Cecilia directed by Luca Bacci and smaller specialist groups such as the highly versatile ‘Stereotipi’ based in our valley of the Serchio are excellent – to say nothing of Egisto Matteucci’s outstanding ‘Polifonica Lucchese’.
If, however, you want to hear Palestrina as he should be heard you’ll have a much better impression in King’s College Chapel rather than the Sistine chapel itself – unless, of course you were lucky enough to be at Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome on the 15th of September this year!
