Fantasy on ice

In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in the planning: to hear Allegri’s Miserere on ice, specifically on the ice of Antarctica. A number of things came together to put this on my bucket list, from the thought of dressing up like penguins (as usual) while we sing to penguins, to reading in the press that the Tallis Scholars ‘have performed on every continent on the planet except Antarctica’. I want to fill a boat with like-minded enthusiasts and adventurers, and set off from South America via the Falklands to the Antarctic Peninsula, hoping to make a landing and a concert at Paradise Bay.

The plan is to fly from the southern tip of Chile (Punta Arenas) or Argentina (Ushuaia) to Port Stanley, from where the chartered boat will sail for the five necessary days to the Peninsula. On the Falklands we hope to give a concert (or sing Evensong) in Christ Church Cathedral, the southernmost Anglican cathedral in the world. The idea of joining forces with local singers is a sound one, though in my experience a catchment of 3,000 people spread across a wild terrain and several islands tends not to produce good choirs. However, since the plan is also to film the whole trip for DVD and television release, I imagine an effort of some kind might be made. On enquiring of the authorities at the cathedral who might join in with this, we were told that there is a Gilbert and Sullivan Society, a good start of sorts, though possibly not ideal for Byrd and Tallis. We’ll see. Meanwhile I may choose to forget what someone told me recently: that if in 1982 we had simply given every Falkland Islander a million pounds and a plot of land somewhere intractable — the Hebrides come to mind — we would have saved a lot of expense, and lives.

From Port Stanley it is hoped that the boat will travel to Wilhelmina Bay where, as the blurb has it, ‘we frequently encounter playful humpback whales’.