When late night host Stephen Colbert began talking up the trip he would soon be taking to The Vatican along with about 100 other comedians, Central Oregon Mastersingers member Judy Corwin was watching.

“He announced it on his show this week, and I went, ‘Well so are we,’” Corwin said.

Colbert, Chris Rock and Conan O’Brien were among the comedians who visited last weekend, and now Corwin and 30 other members of the auditioned choir will set off Tuesday for Italy and the city-state of The Vatican, along with a few friends and family members set off, an eight-day trip Corwin called “a lifetime experience”

The group will depart that afternoon for Portland, where they’ll take a 7:15 p.m. redeye flight to London. From there, they’ll connect to Naples, Italy, touching ground on June 26.

They’ll sing three times while across the pond. The choir will sing two “friendship concerts” in Italy, the first on June 28 at Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata (Church of the Most Holy Annunciation) in Sorrento. That will be followed by a June 30 mass at The Vatican. On July 1, they’ll perform a joint concert with an Italian choir, Ottava Nota, at Basilica di Sant’Eustachio in Rome.

Making plans

Christian Clark, who directs the choir, said that it had been a goal after the 2017-18 season, his first leading the Mastersingers, to take the group overseas, something he’d had the opportunity to do as a singer himself.

“At that point, I started planning for some international tours,” Clark said. “I’ve traveled before, as a singer, never as a director of a choir, and I just have great memories of that and know what an amazing experience that is.”

He and the nonprofit choir’s board began planning possible trips, and then COVID-19 waylaid those plans. Once it seemed safe to start planning again, he reached out to a contact at a tour company, and the suggestion of a Southern Italy tour stood out.

A lot of members of Mastersingers have been to Italy before, and whether to go to Italy or not was a question of whether or not they would be able to sing at The Vatican.

“Once we were able to get some confirmation on that, it made sense to go for it,” he said.

Clark has been there once before — this past November, when he went on an orientation tour to meet locals and scope out possible performance venues.

When in Rome

The group has been practicing since February and gave Central Oregon audiences previews of its concert material in April and earlier this month. They’re quite familiar with what they’ll be singing, Clark said.

“This music has been swirling around for a while, so I don’t think the nerves are really going to hit until everybody lands in Italy,” he said.

Read more: Will symphony’s Spring Concert be Maestro Gesme’s last at Bend High?

At the Sorrento church, the Mastersingers will perform a 45-minute concert program including works from Italian composers, among them the Kyrie and Gloria movements from Giovanni Palestrina’s 1570 Missa Brevis (“short mass”) and “Ave Maria” by Tomas de Victoria, a Spanish composer who lived and worked in Rome.

“We’ll also be doing some modern pieces that are favorites of ours as well,” Clark said. These include “How Can I Keep From Singing?” and “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”

The Mastersingers will sing at a Sunday evening mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in The Vatican and landed on a program sung in Latin after going back and forth with officials there as to what would be appropriate and preferable for the service.

Some of that program will be repeated July 1 when singing with Ottava Nota in Rome to mark the last concert of the trip.

“It’s funny, we’ve been communicating with the choi r in Rome. We wanted to sing something together, so I made some suggestions of several pieces that would be fun,” Clark said. The choir agreed on singing one of the Latin pieces Clark had suggested.

“About a week and a half ago, they decided that it was too much for them to learn, and so they sent a suggestion for us to learn and sing with them. And I have to tell you, we couldn’t believe it. What they want us to sing with them is none other than Elvis Presley,” Clark said, laughing.

“They sent an arrangement of ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love,’ so that’s what we’re going to sing with this Italian choir at this centuries-old church in Rome.”