Upcoming Events
List of Events
In Orbita – Naufragi
A theater and music performance for audiences of all ages, inviting active and interactive participation, Naufragi intertwines Bach’s music and his Goldberg Variations with a theatrical text freely inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, reflecting on the themes of travel and migration, on literal and metaphorical shipwrecks, and on the meaning of “being a community” through the arts. Born in 2025 within the Penitentiary Institute of Parma, the performance also serves as the occasion for workshops at one of the Migrant…
In Orbita – Naufragi
A theater and music performance for audiences of all ages, inviting active and interactive participation, Naufragi intertwines Bach’s music and his Goldberg Variations with a theatrical text freely inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, reflecting on the themes of travel and migration, on literal and metaphorical shipwrecks, and on the meaning of “being a community” through the arts. Born in 2025 within the Penitentiary Institute of Parma, the performance also serves as the occasion for workshops at one of the Migrant…
In Orbita – In quartetto all’opera
Pianist Francesco Libetta joins three of his students from the courses of the Fondazione Paolo Grassi—Christian De Nicolais, Simone Mao, and Giovanni Mascia—in a wide-ranging program titled In Quartetto all’Opera, featuring opera arias, overtures, symphonies and quartets, sonatas, and fantasies—from Gounod to Émile Waldteufel, from Paisiello to Rimsky-Korsakov, up to the famous Quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto. With the passion for theater and the stage, the pianists capture the orchestral score on a single piano, performing with two, three, four, up…
Pulcinella / La favola di Orfeo (diptych)
A diptych of works that reinterpret myth and classical tradition through a 20th-century lens, two masterpieces that take us to the roots of our culture, united under the direction of Jean Renshaw, the Anglo-German artist already welcomed by the Festival, and the conducting of Nicolò Umberto Foron, an international talent leading an opera in Italy for the first time. Alfredo Casella’s The Tale of Orpheus, a rarely performed one-act chamber opera, was composed in 1932 to a libretto by Corrado…
Danilo Squitieri – Cello solo
The Festival is not only in Martina Franca. Amid masserie, cloisters, and churches, it “travels” through the splendid Valle d’Itria territory, bringing music to less conventional and highly charming locations as part of the four-concert series Mediterranean in Music. In the Chiesa Madre di San Nicola in Cisternino, the cello of Danilo Squitieri will resonate, offering a journey spanning several centuries—from the 18th century to the present—exploring all the possibilities and timbral nuances of the string instrument. The program opens…
Concerto del Mediterraneo
Amid masserie, cloisters, and churches, the Festival “travels” through the splendid Valle d’Itria territory, bringing music to less conventional and highly charming locations as part of the four-concert series Mediterranean in Music. Surrounded by lush countryside, not far from Locorotondo, one of Italy’s most beautiful villages, stands the small and elegant Leonardo Trulli Resort. This authentic and welcoming setting hosts a recital dedicated to the new voices of the international scene, featuring young talents refining their craft at the “Rodolfo…
Concert of the spirit
A traditional highlight of the Festival, the Concert of the Spirit, entrusted to the Orchestra ICO della Magna Grecia under the direction of Giovanni Pelliccia, offers an opportunity to explore Stravinsky’s musical writing, particularly his neoclassical style, with the celebrated Apollon Musagète (1927–28), a ballet evoking myth. Written for a small string ensemble, it shares this intimate scoring with Britten’s Lachrymae (1950) for viola and orchestra, with soloist Francesco Peverini. Subtitled “Reflections on a Song of John Dowland,” Britten pays…
Rediscovering the ancient in the 20th century: myth and the Mediterranean in Stravinskij and Casella
The conference examines how the imagery of the ancient world, myth, and the Mediterranean is reinterpreted in 20th-century music, with particular attention to the poetics of Igor Stravinsky and Alfredo Casella, two composers for whom engagement with the ancient world carries deep symbolic significance. Scholars from various Italian universities and conservatories will show how themes of myth, ritual, and the Mediterranean redefine the relationships between tradition and the avant-garde, between cultural identity and cosmopolitanism, and between historical memory and formal…
Concerts with sorbet – The other Casella
The Concerts with Sorbet traditionally explore the composers featured in the Festival’s main opera program. The opening event, The Other Casella, presents the Quartetto Adorno performing Stravinsky’s Concertino and Casella’s Five Pieces, Op. 34, composers to whom the Festival dedicates its inaugural concert. The first work, composed in 1920, highlights a sharply articulated sound, a “thorny emotional landscape,” as Roman Vlad described it; the second, written in the same year as the Concertino, reveals Casella’s personal and original style, marking…
Rediscovering the ancient in the 20th century: myth and the Mediterranean in Stravinskij and Casella
The conference examines how the imagery of the ancient world, myth, and the Mediterranean is reinterpreted in 20th-century music, with particular attention to the poetics of Igor Stravinsky and Alfredo Casella, two composers for whom engagement with the ancient world carries deep symbolic significance. Scholars from various Italian universities and conservatories will show how themes of myth, ritual, and the Mediterranean redefine the relationships between tradition and the avant-garde, between cultural identity and cosmopolitanism, and between historical memory and formal…
Symphonic concert
Composed in Hollywood between 1941 and 1942, Stravinsky’s Danses concertantes consists of five movements of a ballet suite, characterized by a light and playful style, in which the Russian composer quotes himself by reusing themes from his earlier works. The Dances, a “Concerto for Small Orchestra” as Stravinsky himself called it, converse with Schubert’s Deutsche Tänze, written in 1824 for piano. Presented here in the 1931 orchestration by Anton Webern, they shine for their elegance and refinement, in the style…
Vennero da ogni dove. Narrar cantando umanità in cammino
The performance weaves together music, songs, and stories around the theme of travel by sea—a journey that is sometimes passage, sometimes flight, and at other times a desperate attempt to reach shore. The sea is nostrum, yet it could be any sea crossed by humanity in perpetual movement. The sea is the vast water that can inspire fear but can also soothe; it can raise waves and lift lives, and above all, it enables encounters with the “other,” compelling us…
Vennero da ogni dove. Narrar cantando umanità in cammino
The performance weaves together music, songs, and stories around the theme of travel by sea—a journey that is sometimes passage, sometimes flight, and at other times a desperate attempt to reach shore. The sea is nostrum, yet it could be any sea crossed by humanity in perpetual movement. The sea is the vast water that can inspire fear but can also soothe; it can raise waves and lift lives, and above all, it enables encounters with the “other,” compelling us…
Notturno Adriatico
In the historic Masseria Palesi, dating back to the 17th century, amidst olive trees and centuries-old trees of the Valle d’Itria territory, the Festival presents the duo of violinist Francesco D’Orazio and pianist Liubov Gromoglasova in the concert Notturno Adriatico. The “Mediterranean” theme of this Festival edition inspires the concert program, beginning with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Notturno Adriatico (1924), a “music of water” yet also bright and joyful in its writing. Water is also evoked in Marco Betta’s Three Seas (2007), his…
Tarantelle del rimorso
For over thirty years, Pino De Vittorio has studied and reinterpreted the musical tradition of his native Puglia, bringing to light the heritage linked to the tarantellas of the Gargano region and Southern Italian songs. In Tarantelle del Rimorso, accompanied by Marcello Vitale—one of the leading experts of the chitarra battente—De Vittorio revives the ancient repertoire of folk music with an entirely new sensibility. The clarity of sound, the brightness of the singing, the precision of the instrumentation, and the…
Il schiavo di sua moglie
First modern performance A Mediterranean story of Amazons and lovestruck heroes drives Il schiavo di sua moglie (1672), a dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Provenzale, one of the first Neapolitan composers to make his mark in opera, a genre imported from Venice only after 1650. The heart of the plot, as in all 17th-century “alla veneziana” operas, is a reflection on the power of Love, presented as a typical Baroque game designed to entertain…
Concerts with sorbet – The other Bizet
The Concerts with Sorbet traditionally explore the composers featured in the current Festival program. The Other Bizet pays homage to the celebrated Habanera from Carmen, to the rhythms, melodies, and cultural universe that shaped the development of French music inspired by Spain—between the elegance of the Parisian salon and the colors and inflections of Iberian tradition. Pianist Francisco Manuel Soriano, an acclaimed interpreter of this repertoire, and the singers of the “Rodolfo Celletti” Belcanto Academy, guide the audience through the…
Carmen
World premiere in staged form One of the most celebrated operas in the world is presented in Martina Franca in a version never performed before, using the score originally prepared by Bizet in 1874, before the directors of the Opéra Comique de Paris requested major changes for the 1875 premiere. Thanks to the critical work of Paul Prévost, the Bärenreiter edition has returned to the composer’s autograph manuscripts, restoring Carmen in its original opéra-comique form, with extensive use of…
Pulcinella / La favola di Orfeo (diptych)
A diptych of works that reinterpret myth and classical tradition through a 20th-century lens, two masterpieces that take us to the roots of our culture, united under the direction of Jean Renshaw, the Anglo-German artist already welcomed by the Festival, and the conducting of Nicolò Umberto Foron, an international talent leading an opera in Italy for the first time. Alfredo Casella’s The Tale of Orpheus, a rarely performed one-act chamber opera, was composed in 1932 to a libretto by Corrado…
Il schiavo di sua moglie
First modern performance A Mediterranean story of Amazons and lovestruck heroes drives Il schiavo di sua moglie (1672), a dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Provenzale, one of the first Neapolitan composers to make his mark in opera, a genre imported from Venice only after 1650. The heart of the plot, as in all 17th-century “alla veneziana” operas, is a reflection on the power of Love, presented as a typical Baroque game designed to entertain…
Carmen
World premiere in staged form One of the most celebrated operas in the world is presented in Martina Franca in a version never performed before, using the score originally prepared by Bizet in 1874, before the directors of the Opéra Comique de Paris requested major changes for the 1875 premiere. Thanks to the critical work of Paul Prévost, the Bärenreiter edition has returned to the composer’s autograph manuscripts, restoring Carmen in its original opéra-comique form, with extensive use of…
Pulcinella / La favola di Orfeo (diptych)
A diptych of works that reinterpret myth and classical tradition through a 20th-century lens, two masterpieces that take us to the roots of our culture, united under the direction of Jean Renshaw, the Anglo-German artist already welcomed by the Festival, and the conducting of Nicolò Umberto Foron, an international talent leading an opera in Italy for the first time. Alfredo Casella’s The Tale of Orpheus, a rarely performed one-act chamber opera, was composed in 1932 to a libretto by Corrado…
Il schiavo di sua moglie
First modern performance A Mediterranean story of Amazons and lovestruck heroes drives Il schiavo di sua moglie (1672), a dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Provenzale, one of the first Neapolitan composers to make his mark in opera, a genre imported from Venice only after 1650. The heart of the plot, as in all 17th-century “alla veneziana” operas, is a reflection on the power of Love, presented as a typical Baroque game designed to entertain…
Carmen
World premiere in staged form One of the most celebrated operas in the world is presented in Martina Franca in a version never performed before, using the score originally prepared by Bizet in 1874, before the directors of the Opéra Comique de Paris requested major changes for the 1875 premiere. Thanks to the critical work of Paul Prévost, the Bärenreiter edition has returned to the composer’s autograph manuscripts, restoring Carmen in its original opéra-comique form, with extensive use of…
Concerts with sorbet – The other Stravinskij
The Concerts with Sorbet traditionally explore the composers featured in the current Festival program. In The Other Stravinsky, the young talent Paride Losacco performs solo violin pieces spanning the wide arc of 20th-century Italian and European music. The program begins with Stravinsky (whose work opens the Festival with the staging of Pulcinella), continues with Petrassi, Kurtág (celebrating his 100th anniversary this year), and Ysaÿe. The program then looks further back in homage to the father of modern violin virtuosity, with…
Pulcinella / La favola di Orfeo (diptych)
A diptych of works that reinterpret myth and classical tradition through a 20th-century lens, two masterpieces that take us to the roots of our culture, united under the direction of Jean Renshaw, the Anglo-German artist already welcomed by the Festival, and the conducting of Nicolò Umberto Foron, an international talent leading an opera in Italy for the first time. Alfredo Casella’s The Tale of Orpheus, a rarely performed one-act chamber opera, was composed in 1932 to a libretto by Corrado…
Carmen
World premiere in staged form One of the most celebrated operas in the world is presented in Martina Franca in a version never performed before, using the score originally prepared by Bizet in 1874, before the directors of the Opéra Comique de Paris requested major changes for the 1875 premiere. Thanks to the critical work of Paul Prévost, the Bärenreiter edition has returned to the composer’s autograph manuscripts, restoring Carmen in its original opéra-comique form, with extensive use of…
