Orpheus
Week

The Fattoria Vittadini collective invites the city's public to participate in Orpheus Week with a performance designed to engage passersby in a captivating improvised choreography. Two dancers, connected by a long red thread, perform to the music of Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach, engaging passersby in an almost ritualistic dance. It's more than just dance; it's an unexpected way to understand the Baroque period and its profound inner motivation, the music of Orpheus.

Fattoria Vittadini, a contemporary dance collective

Maura di Vietri, dancer

Chiara Ameglio, dancer

Moni Ovadia, one of the most intense and independent voices in Italian theater, discusses his artistic journey in the footsteps of the myth of Orpheus in a conversation with RAI Radio 3 journalist Nicola Pedone. Joining them on stage are musicians from La Lira di Orfeo, who perform key pieces from the ensemble's artistic journey, which will serve to kick off the conversation. Moni Ovadia, actor and director

Presented by Nicola Pedone

The Lyre of Orpheus

Baroque music hides dance among its most profound roots. Since the 16th century, singing has been organized around choreographic motifs, designed to engage the audience not only with the poetic text but also with the rhythm of familiar dances. Maura di Vietri, along with several members of the ensemble, will invite participants to discover these rhythms and respond to them with their bodies, using a contemporary and entertaining approach. Curated by Fattoria Vittadini, a contemporary dance collective.

Maura di Vietri, dancer and instructor

Davide Medas, violin

Nicolò Pellizzari, harpsichord

Smisuranza is a word no longer used in the Italian language. It can be found in a seventeenth-century dictionary, where most terms are explained through poetic phrases that convey much broader meanings than in everyday language. The same thing happens in seventeenth-century music, where every page opens up to infinite possibilities, in tempos, gestures, even in the roles of the instruments, which alternate in responding and accompanying each other, in adhering to the text or improvising. Anais Chen, violin and tenor viola

Chiara Granata, double harp

Two hundred years after the publication of Leopardi's Infinito, what can still be said about this poem? We risk passing it by as something familiar, no longer noticeable. Instead, each line can open a window of understanding about life and poetry, which, like a magnet, expresses the totality of things. Tonight, 'like the wind' is not just poetry, but also the music of the lute, seeking to comprehend the infinite. Davide Rondoni, poet

Elisa La Marca, archlute

What if music really were the nourishment of love? Food and music, sentiment and sensitivity. From this tension arises the story of this program entirely dedicated to the British Orpheus Henry Purcell and his music for solo voice and continuo. A journey into English Baroque sensibility through Shakespearean poetry, music, and flavors. Raffaele Pe, countertenor

The Lyre of Orpheus

Where does the power of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater lie? It's the poem of sorrow as described by Bellini, the absolute masterpiece according to Wagner, and Donizetti even went so far as to say he would give up all his music if he could compose the Stabat. Alongside the two performers, Sunhae Im and Chiara Brunello, director Andrée Ruth Shammah reads poetic fragments that bring us closer to the spirit of this immense work in which a 26-year-old composer openly questions life and its end. Andrée Ruth Shammah, narrator

Sunhae Im, soprano

Chiara Brunello, contralto

The Lyre of Orpheus

Giovanni Sollima is one of the absolute protagonists of music today. His unparalleled virtuoso cello work has been accompanied over the years by composition and the staging of veritable happenings, enthusiastically drawing even the most skeptical of classical music fans. The voice of his cello transforms modern and Baroque languages into a single sonic universe. Giovanni Sollima, cello

The Lyre of Orpheus

The four-part arrangements of Bach's Chorales lend themselves easily to sonic imagination and the most varied chromatic declinations. Fahmi Alqhai presents this repertoire with instrumental means and unexpected vocal expressiveness. The violas of Accademia del Piacere, making their Italian debut, present the rigorous writing of the Kantor of Leipzig with the colors of the Mediterranean and the Spanish voices of their beautiful instruments.

Matinée performance by artists from the Baroque Singing Academy of La Lira di Orfeo, dedicated to solo and ensemble singing, based on the Viennese cantata of the same name by Georg Christoph Wagenseil, performed for the first time in modern times.

Playing music from the past also means delving into the techniques and instruments of an era. It's surprising to note how the perception of sounds and their production have changed over the centuries. Chiara Granata and the students of her historical harp masterclass discuss this in a moment of exploration and listening designed to introduce both adults and children to this extraordinary artistic world.