by We’ve started rehearsals for the holiday concert. Among other pieces we’re doing this lovely one I’ve never heard before called Totus Tuus by Henryk Mikolaj Goreckil. It was written for Pope John Paul II, who said this prayer after he was shot:
Totus tuus sum, Maria, (I am completely yours, Mary)
Mater nostri Redemptoris, (Mother of our Redeemer)
Virgo Dei, Virgo pia, (Virgin Mother of God, blessed virgin)
Mater mundi Salvatoris, (Mother of the world’s Savior)
Totus tuus sum, Maria! (I am completely yours, Mary!)
Awww. The gorgeous guy in this photograph is Robert Gardner, the baritone I gushed about who sang Ellijah for us last season. HE’S BACK. Well, he will be. He’s going to sing the baritone solo in a Vaughan Williams piece we’re doing called *Fantasia on Christmas Carols. Buy your tickets now. You’ll thank me, I promise. From my earlier post about him: “I don’t think I exaggerate when I say every man and woman in the choir had a crush on him — you had to have been there, you would have developed a crush on him too, trust me.”
*It’s pronounced FanTAYsia, but I hear FawnTahSEEa in my head whenever it’s said, for some reason. I’m not sure where that pronunciation came from. I’ll bet when I was 12-years-old I decided that way sounded cooler.
