[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9omwg0qCRk]
Rehearsing and singing in one of Venice’s beautiful churches will be an unforgettable experience for you and your choir. The perfect acoustics designed by Renaissance and Baroque architects, together with the beauty of the location will bring you back to the world when Venice was one of the Maritime Republics.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peQMP-b0XqM]
Much has been made about the wonders of Venice, but few ever venture deep enough across its less touristy, yet still historical hidden places. Beyond hundreds of canals and a diverse architectural style, a secret facet of Venetian life lives on, in which the journey of hand crafting gondola wooden oars and loomed fabrics remains rooted in ancient folk traditions.
This short film uncovers the secrets that have been handed down from father to son and projects you to the Venice that existed 500 years ago, immersing you in the extraordinary craftsmen’s veiled workshops that belong to a long lost era.
You will be immersed in this environment when you come here to sing with your choir!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZvhIVMF50]
Italy has a wonderfully diverse set of regional food traditions. Venetian cuisine is very different from what’s eaten on the mainland, because the lagoon was such an important part of everyday life. Traditional dishes focus on the amazing fish and seafood brought in every day by fishermen from the Adriatic Sea, supplemented by vegetables grown on surrounding islands such as asparagus and artichokes. Check out some delicious dishes that are unique to Venice.
Saor refers to a particular cooking technique, in which onions are softened slowly over a low flame until they’re translucent and aromatic and mixed with raisins and pine nuts. The sarde in question are sardines, which rest in this glorious onion-y mixture.
This plate of pasta is as deeply black as charcoal. Pieces of squid are slow-cooked in tomato sauce until they become meltingly soft. This is then colored with the ink of the squid, which is contained in a tiny pod that skilled fishermen know how to remove without bursting. A little bit of black will color the entire pasta, making it as unusual-looking as it is delicious.
This particularly Venetian kind of pasta is springy and toothsome and it’s tossed in an aromatic sauce of onions, anchovies, and fennel seeds.
Delights of the sea are covered in batter and deep fried to crunchy perfection. You’ll get a mix of shrimp, calamari rings and fish balls.
A dried cod fish is cooked for hours and hours until it becomes soft and the bones dissolve and it’s whipped up with oil to become a glorious white cream. It’s normally eaten on tiny pieces of bread and downed with a bit of prosecco in the evening.
Around the time of Carnival, shops will begin to sell frittelle, which are glorious fried donuts stuffed with cream or raisins and candied orange peel, and dipped in sugar.
This is a typical Venetian snack and it consists of two triangular pieces of white bread with all kinds of inventive fillings inside, bulging out delightfully in the middle. You’ll find everything from prosciutto cotto and artichokes, to mozzarella layered with tomatoes, to shredded radicchio with olives and soft cheese.