The highly anticipated appointment with baroque music is back in the capital. It is the 16th edition of the Rome Baroque Festival, the event that brings compositions not only of a religious nature from the Italian seventeenth century to the churches of the city.
The one in 2023 is a program full of different musical genres, from the Cantata to the Oratorio, from liturgical to profane compositions, belonging to the three great capitals of the Baroque, ‘Rome, Naples and Venice’. A set of cultures and styles transfigured into an art that is capable of social inclusion and symbolic compatibility of differences, and therefore still today good to think about, perform and listen to in a true collective ritual, and therefore presented for the first time in modern times. In-depth musicological research guarantees its authentic originality, just as the choice of performers among the best international interpreters favors its instrumental effectiveness and festive historical dimension. Reliving the Baroque artistically, with its collective spectacularity and above all with its engaging strength, is a perspective that helps everyone to reflect on “how much baroque there is in the lacerating experience of contemporary man and how much those artistic experiences can help to understand the complex social articulations that animate the globalized world”, as artistic director Michele Gasbarro says.
Inauguration on Sunday 26 November in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare at 6.30 pm. On the program, the first modern performance of the Mass for 9 voices and instruments by the Neapolitan composer Antonio Nola; Michele Gasbarro conducts the Festina Lente Ensemble. For the opening concert, free entry, subject to availability.
Followed by the other twelve events which will be hosted in the Refectory of the Trinità dei Monti Monastery, in the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli and in the Sala della Protomoteca del Campidoglio, where the countertenor Andreas Scholl will be awarded. The soprano Francesca Aspromonte will be on stage with Arsenale Sonoro and Boris Begelman, violin soloist and director; the harpsichords of Irene González Roldán (music by Scarlatti) and Simone Pierini (The harpsichord in Rome 1650-1720); the Accademia Montis Regalis with the soprano Vittoriana De Amicis; the Baroque Orchestra of the Italian Conservatories, directed by Enrico Onofri, will perform the Magdalene at the feet of Christ by Antonio Caldara; Vivaldi’s Five Concertos will be proposed by the Camerata Accademica directed by Paolo Faldi; Nando Citarella (percussion and voice) with Michele Carreca (theorbo and baroque guitar) perform music on the border between Renaissance and Baroque; the Solomon Rossi Ensemble presents Echoes of the Jewish world in Venice; the Sestier Armonico Ensemble proposes Bach in Venice.