Lisa Duckers
Staff Writer
Of all the adventures that the choirs of Mira Costa have gone on, none have seemed more extraordinary or more perfect than the one taken this summer.
Costa’s vocal ensemble traveled to the Greek island of Syros to perform as the chorus for the opera “Carmen,” where they backed an international cast in the fifth Annual Festival of the Aegan.
“Being in ‘Carmen’ was incredible. I don’t think any of us pictured it the way it turned out,” junior Aurora Foster said.
The journey to Greece began when the vocal ensemble auditioned to perform at the 2011 Carnegie Hall Concert Series. The artistic director for the series, Peter Tiboris, also happened to be the director for the International Festival of the Aegan.
“When [Tiboris] heard us sing, he just knew that we had to participate in the festival as well as the Carnegie Hall series,” choir director Michael Hayden said.
Although he was raised in the United States, Hayden was born in the small town of Lappa, Greece which is off the Peloponnesian coast.
“For me this trip was really special because it was a wonderful combination of my personal life and my professional life,” Hayden said.
The choir had some difficulty collecting the money needed for the trip. While most of the festival participants are notified almost a year in advance, the vocal ensemble got only five months to prepare. With the help of private and corporate donations, every singer was able to go.
“We received donations from Petros Café and the Manhattan Beach Wine Company. They were very generous to our cause,” Hayden said.
The ensemble was the first high school group to ever perform at the festival, which featured professional opera singers from all over the world.
“We were very welcomed at the festival. Our choir certainly was above their expectations; as soon as we opened our mouths to sing, they realized that we were so much more than just a high school choir,” junior Nicole Olson said.
During the two-week long trip, the choir took many side trips to various places in Greece, including a two-day stay in Athens. While in Athens, they stopped to sing in the 1896 Olympic tunnel.
“The echoing made it feel as if we were being surrounded by our own voices. It was surreal and like nothing I’ve ever experienced, or probably will ever, experience again,” Olson said.
The vocal ensemble was also invited to sing a solo concert in the Festival Sunset Series of Concerts in Syros’s famous St. Nikolas Orthodox Church where they performed a cappella.
“Singing in Saint Nikolas was phenomenal. The acoustics were amazing, and the church was gorgeous and very decorated. I actually sang literally five feet away from the Bishop of the church, and it was a wonderful experience,” Foster said.
Many of the students who performed in Greece considered the experience to be the chance of a lifetime for the vocal ensemble.
“The trip was filled with wonderful experiences. If something didn’t happen exactly as planned, something better would come out of it,” choir accompanist Mark McCormick said.
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