Come celebrate with us!
Festival celebrates 25th birthday!
If you hear beautiful music in your dreams, it is a lucky sign – only good things are in store for you! One of them is here – the Summer Festivities of Early Music have published the programme of their 25th anniversary edition, whose fine-tuned dramaturgy is framed by DREAMS. The festival’s offerings focus on dreaming and imagination in various early music contexts, as well as the work of musical visionaries.
The soul of the 25-year-old festival is first and foremost its audience. “In the years to come, we want music to continue to connect us,” says Jana Semerádová, the festival’s chief dramaturg and founder, and she adds what the audience can look forward to again this year: “An utterly unique genius loci, treats and treasures from the music archives, unusual musical instruments, unbridled musicality, and the captivating musical creativity of the invited artists...”
We look forward to seeing you at the concerts of the 25th anniversary edition!
The seven festival evenings will be held in sensitively chosen historic halls, which lend the concerts an unmistakable atmosphere. After nine years, the festival returns to the Renaissance Ball Games Hall in the Royal Garden of Prague Castle, which will be brought to life by the exhilarating Basque Euskal Barrok Ensemble.
A variety of historical instruments, whose sound is rarely heard, will grace the festival’s stages. Members of the renowned Capella de la Torre ensemble will present the shawm, alto pommer, dulcian, and Renaissance trombone, to accompany the soprano Hana Blažíková. The vocal and instrumental programme will offer, among other things, an answer to the question of what a person from the first half of the 17th century dreamt about.
The opening concert, Paradisi porte, will be a truly exceptional showcase of interesting sounds – there will be a fiddle, tromba marina (trumscheit), psaltery, Gothic harp, organetto, kannel, and medieval trumpets (buisine, trompette des ménestrels, clareta). Find out more about this unique Czech-Flemish project here.
The Le Salon de musique concert will take us to the environment of classical and early romantic salons – string quintets and sextets by W. A. Mozart and L. van Beethoven will be complemented by the Czech premiere of a sextet by the Polish composer I. F. Dobrzyński, which was already considered by contemporary critics to be “the best of its kind”. The protagonists of the concert will be soloists of the Wrocławska Orkiestra Barokowa.
The fame and virtuosity of the Neapolitan style will be recalled by the Talenti Vulcanici ensemble, whose home is this southern Italian metropolis. One musical delicacy after another will fill the beautiful painted hall of Troja Chateau, a true gem of Italian artistic style on the banks of the Vltava River.
The Portuguese ensemble Os Músicos do Tejo will accompany the rising star of world opera, soprano Ana Vieira Leite. Listeners will be treated to gems from the Portuguese music archives, as well as melancholic modinhas, emotionally intense fado, and sensual dances called lundum.
The celebration of the festival’s 25th birthday will culminate in the theatre – where magic and miracles transport audiences to a world of fantasy. The staged performance of G. F. Handel’s pastoral opera Acis and Galatea is an ideal portrayal of a life of love and peace, which even jealousy cannot destroy and in which death is not a sign of the end but of a new beginning. The sparklingly delightful, yet fatally dramatic story of the nymph Galatea, the shepherd Acis, and the Cyclops Polyphemus will be told by five soloists, actors from the Buchty a loutky (Cakes and Puppets) theatre troupe and the Collegium Marianum ensemble under the direction of Jana Semerádová.
The performance is dedicated to the memory of soprano Patricia Burda Janečková († 2023), who played the role of the nymph Galatea in the premiere production of this musical piece in 2017.
