25/04/2012 Blog!

On April 25, we had a busy day ahead of us. First we were seeing St. Paul’s Cathedral, the marriage site of Price Charles and Princess Diana. This Cathedral was very interesting because it gave a lot of history to the world, and was attacked during World War Two and served as the location for many royal events. Something interesting about the Cathedral is that we were able to climb 1,500 stairs all the way to the top of the Cathedral. This gave us a 360 degree view of the city of London that could have been seen on the Eye…We saved money! We also saw the longest-running musical on the West End, Les Miserables. This show, written by Alan Boubil and Claude-Michal Schoenberg, is an epic pieceof work that focuses on the student revolution shortly after the French Revolution and is based on the book of the same name by famed French writer, Victor Hugo. We were seated in the front row which is an experience in itself. Being able to see the detailed work to  the sets, lights, and make-up was wonderful. You could see all the detail that they would need to change on certain characters faces to make them appear older throughout the show. The show utilizes a revolve which was something that I had seen before, but never done to the extent that it was in the show. After the show ended, we had to quickly rush to St. Stephen's Church to attend a German High School's choir concert. This was truly an experience. Not only were we in a church that had been bombed in WWII, but I witnessed an amazing choir full of amazing talent. Something interesting about the performance was that they performed pieces that Culver's choir has performed. I was most attentive during these because I wanted to compare it to our own performances. Locus Iste was especially different because they were doing their vowel shapes differently than we have been doing here at school. The concert only ran an hour long and flew by. The students were very nice to all of us and it was truly inspiring to see that Culver is not the only choir that goes on tour. Until this, I had not seen another choir that toured. It was awesome!