A Baroque Summer in Italy (1/2)

An invitation to travel and discover the many festivals that bloom across Italy during the beautiful summer season.

Summer is undoubtedly the best season to experience the vibrancy and diversity of the early music scene in Italy, from the Middle Ages to the late Baroque. It’s also an invitation to travel—through magnificent, history-laden places where countless concerts resonate. A different way of discovering Italy, by meeting artists and music lovers, far from the bustle of major tourist hotspots, at the gentle pace of festivals flourishing in small towns rich in history and tradition. Time to pack your bags!

Parma: a grand Farnese Baroque theatre

One of the first events on the summer calendar is the Farnese Festival, held in Parma during the first week of June. This historic city in Emilia-Romagna is famous for its musical and culinary traditions. The artistic director of this young festival, founded in 2022, is Fabio Biondi, founder of the renowned orchestra Europa Galante. Concerts are held within the monumental Pilotta complex, which houses several key sites of Parmese culture. Think of the splendid Farnese Theatre, with its extraordinary 17th-century theatrical architecture, reconstructed according to its original plans after WWII bombings, the National Gallery with its significant painting collection, and the magnificent 18th-century Palatine Library.

The Festival opens on June 2 at the Farnese Theatre with the first modern performance, in concert version, of Giovanni Maria Capelli’s opera I Fratelli Riconosciuti—a musical drama premiered in Parma in 1726 that featured two of the most celebrated castrati of the time, Carlo Broschi and Giovanni Carestini. On June 7, the ensemble Concerto Italiano, conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini, will perform Monteverdi’s Terzo Libro dei madrigali, followed by the 1775 melodrama Ariadne auf Naxos by Georg Benda, staged by the Fondazione Teatro Due and Europa Galante.

Cremona: lose yourself in Monteverdi’s hometown

June is also the month of Italy’s oldest and most important early music festival, held in Lombardy, in Cremona, Monteverdi’s birthplace and a city famed for its long tradition of violin making. The theme of the 42nd Monteverdi Festival, led by Andrea Cigni, is “Heroes” and is preceded by a series of preliminary concerts featuring international stars such as Cecilia Bartoli and Jordi Savall. The programme is so rich it makes one want to move to Cremona—at least from the opening night on June 13, when the festival begins in earnest with a production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria performed by La Fonte Musica under Michele Pasotti and staged by Davide Livermore, who also takes on the role of Iro.

What follows is a wealth of concerts by many ensembles in venues of historic and artistic interest throughout the city. Accademia Bizantina will perform in the fascinating Violin Museum. In the grand hall of the Catholic University, housed in the former Santa Monica monastery, you can hear ensembles such as Theatro dei Cervelli, Mare Nostrum and Concerto Romano, while the ensemble RossoPorpora will sing in the Palazzo Fodri, a fine example of Renaissance architecture in Cremona.

The Baroque church of San Marcellino will host a range of concerts, including a performance by the Tallis Scholars marking the 500th anniversary of Palestrina’s birth with his Requiem, based on a new critical edition from the 1588 manuscript. Also featured is Arte del Mondo Orchestra, presenting Massimiliano Toni’s arrangement of Monteverdi’s famed work under the title Orfeo 2.0: A Barock Opera.

After many Monteverdi-inspired performances and echoes of late Renaissance and early Baroque music, the festival will gradually turn its focus to Francesco Cavalli, with concerts by Les Epopées, Il Groviglio and Les Talens Lyriques, exploring the relationship between master and pupil. The closing event on June 29 will be a staging of Ercole amante at the Ponchielli Theatre, performed by the Monteverdi Festival Orchestra and Choir – Cremona Antiqua under Antonio Greco and staged by Andrea Bernard.