The Glee Club returned in late January from a successful concert tour in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It was their first tour outside the United States since 1984, according to choral director and music professor Catharine Melhorn.
Forty-six of the seventy-five Glee Club members traveled, giving seven concerts and also singing informally during their fourteen-day European tour. Concerts featured a variety of pieces in several languages--Czech, German, Russian, Hebrew, Latin, and English--including the African song "Mbiri Kuna Mwari" and even the MHC alma mater. They sang in schools, in medieval and baroque-era churches, and gave a musical tribute, a work by Jewish composer Lukas Foss based on ancient synagogue chants, during a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.
In between concerts and rehearsals, students saw the sights in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Prague, and Salzburg. The singers stayed in student hostels, hotels, and in German families' homes. They had free time to visit museums, attend a ballet performance, visit landmarks such as Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg, and sample the local cuisine. Food varied from McDonald's to an elaborate hotel dinner that lasted three hours.
MHC alumnae were active in organizing several of the concerts, and even helped arrange local sightseeing. Many alumnae were in the Glee Club's audiences, along with enthusiastic locals and, one night, the American ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Melhorn says that most students kept extensive journals during the trip and have since submitted thoughtful written accounts of tour highlights. These include the home-stays, viewing the remains of the Berlin Wall, walking on Prague's Charles Bridge, bonding with Glee Club friends, and connecting with new audiences. She describes the trip as "an experience never to be forgotten."
Glee Club members encounter a fresh-air feast in front of the famed
Brandenburg Gate,
near where a massive wall once separated East and West Berlin.
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