GLEE=MC2

“I think this is the greatest women’s story,” effuses Desiree LaVertu, the Caltech Women’s Glee Club director. She passes around sheet music to “Nova Nova Ave Fit Ex Eva,” a sacred yet nonetheless snappy tune. “It’s the story of the Annunciation,” explains LaVertu, who joined the glee club as director this fall. “Mary’s probably only a little bit younger than you are now, and she’s visited by the archangel Gabriel. And you can imagine this poor girl having an archangel kneel down in front of her. What would your response be to see an angel in your room?”

“I messed up,” pipes an alto in the back.

If the 42 members of the women’s glee club, sitting in the basement of the university’s student affairs center, seem a little punchy, they are. “I’ve been up since 4 o’clock this morning,” confesses Lisa MacWilliams-Brooks, an astonishingly fresh-faced soprano, between songs at 9:15 p.m. The old Caltech joke describes life as “grades, social life and sleep. Pick two.”

LaVertu continues through the Latin lyrics. “And then you have a little refrain here: ‘Dread not thou for thee conceived with great virtue.’ So the announcement is she’s going to be an unmarried pregnant woman in a culture that does not tolerate that,” LaVertu pauses. “Oh, great news, thank you.”

While the men’s glee club, established in 1908, enjoys an august history, Caltech’s women’s group--founded in 1972, two years after women first gained admittance to the university--is still considered something of an upstart. The school’s average boy-to-girl ratio is leveling out; about one-third of this year’s undergraduates are women. But it is still highly likely that, in certain classes, you will be the only gal in the room. “They just look at you when you walk in,” says mezzo-soprano Robin Mayes about her all-male math class.

Asked how rare it is to see 42 women in one place, Deborah Eason says, half-jokingly, “This is the only time it ever happens.” Which is why this group, made up mostly of students belting Renaissance processionals as if they weren’t staring down the barrel of eight more hours of homework, feels so close. A few Aves sure do break the monotony of plunging into the mysteries of subatomic particles.

“And finally Mary says, ‘I am your servant.’ So what’s the moral of this story?” the director asks.

Silence.

“How about accepting your destiny,” offers LaVertu, “as difficult or as world-changing as that might be?”