A few days before the Carnegie Hall debut of the Barry University Chamber Ensemble, some sopranos stayed after rehearsal.
''Not only have I never been to Carnegie Hall, but I've never been to New York,'' said Elizabeth Garrard. ``I got the smallest camera I could find and the smallest purse, so I can just slip it in my back pocket.''
Bad idea, said Julia McFarlane, who knows about these things. ``Keep it on your wrist. Or get a fanny pack. They will pickpocket you.''
This is going to be a big deal -- huge. Carnegie Hall, for crying out loud. They will be on stage, in the company of four choirs from South Florida high schools, a professional orchestra and a handful of professional soloists.
Only Giselle Elgarresta Rios, who directs the Ensemble and will conduct Monday night's performance, has performed there before, and she felt fluttery for three months afterward.
So it was all the more important, at this point, to keep one's emotions under control.
''I always try not to get overly excited,'' said Bianca-Lynn Cherry. ``That always leaves room for disappointment. You don't want to spoil it for yourself.''
Garrard concurred. ''I'm trying not to have too many expectations of it,'' she said. ``I just want to be there and experience it. I want to be in the moment every second I'm there.''
There'd be an early-morning flight, dinner with alumni in Chinatown, a couple of four-hour practices and then the concert itself, followed by a Circle Line boat trip around Manhattan.
About that concert: tickets for $35 and up are on their way to selling out, according to the production company that rented the hall; seven pieces, five featuring the Ensemble, most of them by Hispanic composers, with one notable exception. That would be Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos' Chros No. 10, Rasga o Coracao, likely the only choral piece in the world sung (and sometimes chanted) in Tupi-Guarani, a family of indigenous languages of South America spoken in much of the Amazon but not so much in Miami Shores.
So what do the words mean?
''I haven't the slightest idea,'' McFarlane said. ``I do know the title of the piece means ripped heart, tearing of the heart, or something.''
''Ripping the natives out of their homeland?'' Garrard asked.
''Or two lovers, and they're breaking up,'' Cherry said.
Somebody started banging on the piano, unmelodically, and another group spilled into the rehearsal room and filled its seats. At this, the sopranos -- who had class to get to, anyway -- made their exit.
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