Newbury choir helps lends a voice at Rugby World Cup

Singers recruited to help sing Romanian national anthem

SINGERS from Newbury choir, Harmony, recently answered the call to help out at the Rugby World Cup, writes Brian Radford.

Their expertise in the Romanian language was needed to support Camerata in singing the Romanian anthem before the match against Ireland at Wembley.

The choir, which formed 10 years ago and rehearse in the lounge of their musical director Helen Tuck, already have a number of songs sung in the language in their repertoire and so they were delighted to step in at the last minute.

Mrs Tuck said: “We were asked to provide a number of sopranos and altos to boost the World Cup choir, which was short of singers who had experienced singing in Romanian.

“We were told that a number of singers had dropped out of the World Cup choir because they found the Romanian language too difficult.

“It was an honour for us to join Camerata.

“It was very exciting to be singing in front of 80,000 people – a few more than we’re used to – in a packed Wembley arena, though some of us found it quite nerve-racking.”

The game ended in defeat for Romania, with Ireland winning 44-16.

Mrs Tuck added: “We were allowed into the fans zone and it was just a sea of green, with tiny pockets of Romanian people.

“One of our friends said that while we were singing the national anthem the camera swang round on to a small group of Romanians who were singing along so we must have been doing something right.”

The choir is made up of 28 members of all ages and backgrounds and regularly tours other countries to sing, most recently Belgium.

“Harmony enjoys singing songs from countries all over the world,” Mrs Tuck added.

“Many of them are very beautiful, but need to be sung in their own language, which is a big test for us, but we enjoy it.”