Here the Venetian Center for Baroque Music, which will launch in June 2011. Thank you to Marc for the information!
To learn more, here are two interviews, the first from Classiquenews.com and the second site Anaclase.com .
Venice, the Venetian opened Centre for Baroque Music
Interview with Olivier Lexa
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Venice, the Venetian opened Centre for Baroque Music
Music in Venice
Olivier Lexa "dare" to launch what everybody expected and what that person had not previously realized, and a research center dedicated to the dissemination of Venetian Baroque. C ' is now official, the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music (VCBM) offering in June, his first musical season will be inaugurated. The idea is to restore the baroque Venetian in Venice: incredible challenge when still the operas of Monteverdi and Vivaldi are more played out than in the lagoon city of Venice ... See also the recent resurrection of a Pearl buffa of Galuppi, which occurred last January, thanks to the Opera Royal de Wallonie in Liege. Yet it was in Venice where it all began: new forms are created so far and fixed (Sonata, Cantata ...). The opera, now open to recreational all that is paying and not elitist, reserved for princes and kings, it develops from 1637. Best, the greatest composer of the early Baroque implanted there, richly paid by the Senators, Claudio Monteverdi, who was appointed choirmaster of San Marco from 1613, to succeed Martinengo ... The new center-mark at last the long awaited return of the Venetian Baroque music in its walls is the challenge defended not without passion and conviction by Olivier Lexa which intends to center the next equivalent Venetian Music Centre Baroque de Versailles, which is dedicated to Baroque Versailles ....
What are the main objectives of the new Centre?
Olivier Lexa : Our first desire and respond to a major demand was not met so far in Venice from the Venetian public and foreigners, who so obviously are waiting 'hear this directory that has turned a page in the history of music and art in general: that of the Seicento (note: the seventeenth century), the great Venetian opera, cantatas, sonatas and concertos. So remember that until that we create the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, this music was played everywhere except in Venice! Which is a shame when you know that the public expects it here. Everyone knows that opera was born here, that's an extraordinary story to tell, it is intrinsically linked to the history of this city, its beauty, in short everything that makes it attracts millions of visitors each year ... the birth of opera here is even a kind of synthesis except Venice. One need only contemplate the city, which was conceived as a great opera set, but so far it obscured the point. Our main goal is to change that. And counting Directory of course, because you think that music is not just Venetian in Coronation of Poppea and the Four Seasons. The funds are huge, and much more attractive than you think. Simply replaying Sartorio's Orfeo to raise awareness to everyone that this is one of the great masterpieces of opera. For the rest, just tell the story of this music is so extraordinary that I seem to be more difficult and thankless tasks to complete.
What aspects unpublished / unknown to the Baroque in Venice want to first give special emphasis in the design cycle concerts and operas to come, in the preparation of future conferences?
Olivier Lexa: We dedicate the Center this year from June 2011 through a series of events around the theme "It Risveglio degli Affetti" ("The Awakening of the Passions" ). We start from the beginning, trying to explain to the public how and why we moved here from Renaissance to Baroque, ie a complex and contemplative music to an art expressive and affecting a wider audience. After seeing how and why this revolution took place in Venice, we will to show how it spread throughout the West, still on the Venetian model. The conferences will be targeted primarily to the widest audience possible, more than musicologists. I find it interesting to hear a musicologist talk to a neophyte than another musicologist! The floor will be also given to the artists themselves and leave you a surprise for the upcoming release of our program ... Next year we will work instead on the end of the Seicento, which began before the advent of opera seria opera buffa and the heyday of the Venetian art of music, with composers like Sacrati, Ziani Cesti, Pagliardi, Pallavicino Pollarolo, Legrenzi, Lotti and Gasparini.
You associate the music research, dissemination and co-production, an editorial activity: what is the subject of your next publication date of June 2011?
Olivier Lexa : My first book on Italian music will tackle the core issue: how and why the musical revolution took place in Venice Baroque - and a route through the city, a route that will present the scene of this revolution. As you know, Venice is also a city of writers, it prompts you to write ... I also have the chance to published another book at the same time (in June, along with our opening), this time by Editions Leo Scheer: a novel, which ends ... guess where!
Music in Venice
Olivier Lexa "dare" to launch what everybody expected and what that person had not previously realized, and a research center dedicated to the dissemination of Venetian Baroque. C ' is now official, the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music (VCBM) offering in June, his first musical season will be inaugurated. The idea is to restore the baroque Venetian in Venice: incredible challenge when still the operas of Monteverdi and Vivaldi are more played out than in the lagoon city of Venice ... See also the recent resurrection of a Pearl buffa of Galuppi, which occurred last January, thanks to the Opera Royal de Wallonie in Liege. Yet it was in Venice where it all began: new forms are created so far and fixed (Sonata, Cantata ...). The opera, now open to recreational all that is paying and not elitist, reserved for princes and kings, it develops from 1637. Best, the greatest composer of the early Baroque implanted there, richly paid by the Senators, Claudio Monteverdi, who was appointed choirmaster of San Marco from 1613, to succeed Martinengo ... The new center-mark at last the long awaited return of the Venetian Baroque music in its walls is the challenge defended not without passion and conviction by Olivier Lexa which intends to center the next equivalent Venetian Music Centre Baroque de Versailles, which is dedicated to Baroque Versailles ....
What are the main objectives of the new Centre?
Olivier Lexa : Our first desire and respond to a major demand was not met so far in Venice from the Venetian public and foreigners, who so obviously are waiting 'hear this directory that has turned a page in the history of music and art in general: that of the Seicento (note: the seventeenth century), the great Venetian opera, cantatas, sonatas and concertos. So remember that until that we create the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, this music was played everywhere except in Venice! Which is a shame when you know that the public expects it here. Everyone knows that opera was born here, that's an extraordinary story to tell, it is intrinsically linked to the history of this city, its beauty, in short everything that makes it attracts millions of visitors each year ... the birth of opera here is even a kind of synthesis except Venice. One need only contemplate the city, which was conceived as a great opera set, but so far it obscured the point. Our main goal is to change that. And counting Directory of course, because you think that music is not just Venetian in Coronation of Poppea and the Four Seasons. The funds are huge, and much more attractive than you think. Simply replaying Sartorio's Orfeo to raise awareness to everyone that this is one of the great masterpieces of opera. For the rest, just tell the story of this music is so extraordinary that I seem to be more difficult and thankless tasks to complete.
What aspects unpublished / unknown to the Baroque in Venice want to first give special emphasis in the design cycle concerts and operas to come, in the preparation of future conferences?
Olivier Lexa: We dedicate the Center this year from June 2011 through a series of events around the theme "It Risveglio degli Affetti" ("The Awakening of the Passions" ). We start from the beginning, trying to explain to the public how and why we moved here from Renaissance to Baroque, ie a complex and contemplative music to an art expressive and affecting a wider audience. After seeing how and why this revolution took place in Venice, we will to show how it spread throughout the West, still on the Venetian model. The conferences will be targeted primarily to the widest audience possible, more than musicologists. I find it interesting to hear a musicologist talk to a neophyte than another musicologist! The floor will be also given to the artists themselves and leave you a surprise for the upcoming release of our program ... Next year we will work instead on the end of the Seicento, which began before the advent of opera seria opera buffa and the heyday of the Venetian art of music, with composers like Sacrati, Ziani Cesti, Pagliardi, Pallavicino Pollarolo, Legrenzi, Lotti and Gasparini.
You associate the music research, dissemination and co-production, an editorial activity: what is the subject of your next publication date of June 2011?
Olivier Lexa : My first book on Italian music will tackle the core issue: how and why the musical revolution took place in Venice Baroque - and a route through the city, a route that will present the scene of this revolution. As you know, Venice is also a city of writers, it prompts you to write ... I also have the chance to published another book at the same time (in June, along with our opening), this time by Editions Leo Scheer: a novel, which ends ... guess where!
Interview by Alex Pham
All information and upcoming events site center for the Venetian Baroque Music
Olivier Lexa, maintenance
creation of the Venetian Baroque Music Centre for
a research and a festival
Some projects are veritable invitations to travel through time and space. It If the Venetian Centre for Baroque Music, a new foundation that was born in Venice thanks to support and work of Olivier Lexa, its initiator. We present this project that carries with as much passion as pragmatism, a pragmatism that demonstrates that culture can unite the intellectual energy and financial resources to support a baroque music, although it enchants audiences with his wealth and its diversity, remains to be rediscovered.
Let us talk of the Centre de Musique Baroque Venice that you just created ...
As you know the Venetian music is played around the world ... everywhere except in Venice. Yet the city of Venice has created opera, cantata, sonata, concerto, etc.. Insofar as there baroque music really took off, he seemed coherent, after work on the French Romantic music that I contributed to Palazzetto Bru Zane, and after moving to Venice and back on a beautiful adventure, this time in the service of Venetian music. Hence the creation of this research center and concert whose aim is to spread the Venetian repertoire, from Monteverdi Vivaldi. These huge composers define the two terminals of the historical heyday of this music, the period when Venice was a laboratory for experimentation, creation of a new aesthetic that was turning a page in the history of art. This project could be created thanks to the sponsorship. We work with artists who have explored this directory, have a pleasure to defend and a real desire to do so.
In what situation is now the Venice Baroque music?
Since the late eighteenth century, Venice has turned to a different music. It is still very noticeable to the place of the Fenice - built at that time, shortly before the fall of the Republic - who always prefers the Italian bel canto nineteenth. The Venetian baroque opera is practically absent. Vivaldi, it is widely present in Venice, but only by concerts at the chain where we relentlessly rehashing Four Seasons tourists. Hence the challenge make Venice its repertoire and instrumental choice, that of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century, his most creative period.
What means do you have?
The first is to work and live in a city so extraordinary that opens up incredible opportunities and where special places that were created and stored works. But the venture would not be possible without our sponsors. The Center is a private financed through them. They possess the knowledge and love of the city and its music. For them to do something today in Venice in this direction was obvious. Some live there, like Donna Leon is the President of our Honorary Council - an incredible character! She knows the repertoire and invests heavily in the work of the Centre. Most of the people who bring us their help (and in different ways, not just financial) are present in the Honorary Council: Cecilia Bartoli, which is no longer - what a joy to have the support of the vast artist! - Axel Vervoordt which has its own foundation, to this very Venice at the Palazzo Fortuny, Jean-François Dubos, also chairman of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, and patrons of the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. Among its members our Board also has the great writer indienVikram Seth, a true lover of music that I met in Venice a few months ago, and Philippe Sollers whose encounter was decisive: It enlightened me on a particular dimension key directory that of the ambiguity of the sacred and the profane in Venice, an obvious interdependence between the two and at the same time a permanent opposition. Princess Constance de Polignac We were also joined, music lover and patron of music whose family is obviously very related to Venice Palazzo Polignac - were among the other Polignac commissioned a number of creations at the Biennale. Finally, as you know the Anglo-Saxon being great lovers of Venice and his music, two leading figures support us: Lawrence Lovett, the founder of Venetian Heritage, a former member of the board of u Metropolitan Opera and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and finally Lord Browne of Madingley, that needs no introduction. But do not think that Italians do not help us! Among them, the Countess of Belgiojoso- Family Beaujoyeux Balthazar (French translation of the name), creator of court ballet in 1581 for Catherine de Medici - and Count Federico Spinola, a great patron ultramontane. Among the Venetians who were very supportive, I would also cite the first encouraging me in this adventure, the Count and Countess Zeno, descendants of a patrician family that has particular Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750), Grand Venetian author, librettist and creator of the opera seria . It is extremely motivating to our team still nascent to have such support.
Patronage is it easier in Italy than in France?
Not quite the contrary. It is more complicated because Italy, who are less accustomed than the Anglo-Saxon use of patronage, not even the tax framework. As grants for Italian culture are much lower, particularly those of the opera, only the sponsorship can now afford to implement new projects. We are currently in an exciting period of transition from western cultural background, a moment that requires us to ask different the question of patronage.
How is the team composed of center?
my pleasure to work with the rediscovery of this amazing book with my colleague Giulio D'Alessio, production manager of the structure. He is also manager Il Complesso Barocco and founder of talent agency Tuma Productions. Our President Fabio Moretti is also very present. It not only fulfills a ceremonial role, far from it! In addition, our scientific advisor, Jean-François Lattarico, is a cornerstone for research projects.
When we see the energy that unites the Center, the Baroque is far from dead in Italy. One can even say that its main asset is the enthusiasm?
Oh, but it is far from dead in Italy and Venice, because, in fact, there are still many things to do there. Honestly, I would not have launched such a project in another city. In fact, Venice is a city with tiny hundred times fewer inhabitants than larger cities, but it has a real international dimension, with an audience from around the world, English, American, German, French, Asian and all ... are there largely because they love art.
The aim of the foundation, is the return of the Venetian music in Venice?
Not only in Venice! The idea is really to work on the repertoire. This is my personal approach that has always been to work on tour. When you make a long repeat artists on a new project, it is unfortunate that all the energy deployed gives rise to only a concert. Our goal is to show the public around the world, Venice has really turned an important page in the history of music, it is not anecdotal. The issue is broader than the Venetian public strict sense. We are working systematically on tour programs in coherence between research, publishing, concerts and recordings.
Let's talk a little about yourself. You just baroque music?
Yes, and it is through music I knew Venice Baroque. It was 2001, so that is exactly ten years. At San Giorgio Maggiore, I attended a master class at the Cini Foundation on the techniques of improvisation during Vivaldi and Benedetto Marcello. I just started my professional life. The encounter with this music was a stroke of lightning. Since it is a directory that I love. Now I can continue studying in a city I love, after having enriched by other experiences, having worked with Benjamin Lazar one hand, and led two structures as contradictory as the Opera Festival Streets and Palazzetto Bru Zane. Venice also enabled me to strengthen my writing activity. In June, I will publish two books: my novel Excerpts from Leo Scheer, and my essay on music in Venetian Elzeviro, exceptional Venetian publisher.
Where does this book?
I spent some hours in the Marciana library, at the Cini Foundation, the Querini Stampalia at Casa Goldoni, the Conservatory Benedetto Marcello to try to get an idea out of everything we know about the Venetian opera from Monteverdi to Vivaldi to draw the very substance and, especially, to understand how and why Venice has revolutionized Western music - how, in forty years, a page has completely turned, making us move from the Renaissance to the Baroque, in Venice why we opened for the first time the opera to a paying audience, which had a profound impact on the nascent lyrical, the consequences upon which the opera is still alive today. It is in Venice come the first reflections Machinery, on the report to the public on the making of revenue and therefore on the economics of performing arts. It's in Venice as we landed the first questions on editing music, invented again in the late fifteenth century. I asked myself what are the ingredients of philosophy, art history and thought - not only in music history - that made possible in this city and not elsewhere an event so extraordinary. The book will be translated into Italian, then in English, English and German.
Which directory Venetian will you defend?
Claudio Monteverdi [following portrait by Domenico Fetti (1589-1623)] and Antonio Vivaldi in time define the limits between the early seventeenth century and half of the eighteenth century. When one thinks of the Venetian music of this period, other names come to mind, as Cavalli, Caldara, Albinoni and Marcello, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Especially for opera, where the period of the years 1660 to 1680 is really exciting. She sees the last fires of Venetian opera, the this theater that combines comedy and tragedy before the emergence of the opera seria and the opera buffa Naples. Besides the opera seria was born in Venice since Apostolo Zeno is the creator, before metastasis, the so often ignored. In the second half of the seventeenth century, an opera is very representative of the genius of Venetian opera: the Orfeo Antonio Sartorio (1673), located between the musical theater - all that we have in the ear Monteverdi and Cavalli - and the opera seria . Veaucoup its arie are fairly short, with the emerging taste for long vocalizations and vocal virtuosity that does not yet the whole place. One can find a real orchestra, which exceeds the small instrumental ensemble available to Cavalli. Quality, the book presents a true story. We're not even in the opera seria where the music takes precedence over drama. Instead, it is a kind of perfect balance between drama and music. But this is not the only directory to which we work. We will discuss all these musicians, as Sacrati, Ziani, Cesti, Pagliardi, Pallavicino Pollarolo, Gasparini or Lotti, who were composers of immense, at least as well known-that Cavalli wrote dozens and dozens of opera and many religious and instrumental works. For this type, Giovanni Legrenzi is central to Venice: it is the true inventor of the trio sonata before Corelli.
Can you really work with what you find in a library or do a music reinvent ?
As you know, the partitions, like those that are Cavalli among the treasures of Marciana, tend to be terse. The best example of what to make of this directory is that of René Jacobs with the Calisto . He completely re-instrumented part of the music, because if one is limited to existing hardware part, there is not much. It is difficult to imagine that at the time the concert organizers were able to mobilize musicians to play only a few tunes, we know perfectly well that the artists improvised and played throughout the show. It is now a process that musicologists and musicians are accustomed to. It is also necessary gathering sources that are not only in Venice. I think Vivaldi, for example, whose background is in Turin, like other composers whose scores are in Germany, England, Paris or in other Italian cities like Milan and Rome. Obviously, the goal is to federate the research network.
Bring the dream is for the Center essential?
By remaining on the partition, we miss a whole dimension to permeate the music. At the time, Venice was a parallel world. Its inhabitants did not all use the same hour, for six months of the year people were wearing masks, which allowed a social mix that did not exist elsewhere in Europe. Here, church and state were separated - a fact completely original had many consequences on daily life, the editorial life and artistic production. The history and the richness of Venice, where they lived on water, were based on trade with the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. This city saw the advent of frequent travelers who went to China, as Marco Polo or into Canada, as Nicolò Zeno . This world, we can still guess today by visiting the city, but become quickly need that tells us and tells us what we see. Arriving in Venice is first allowed to see an opera set, basically. Venice was built to show something: One of the aims of the Centre is show how and why Venice was built for opera.
Will you establish educational programs?
We created an academy for young singers each year will rise a lyrical work, with a scene or space. Various educational programs are underway in Venice with the School of Early Music makes a very good job with younger audiences, but also with school. We also want to work with young people who know nothing about music and that can amaze the discovery of this directory as part of their roots. His theatrical dimension s will help them, professional or not. If you look a little history: in France at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, the singers were comedians and actors singers and finally, we see that the same job, before any one is in the theater . Today artists are aware of the true dimension of the spoken text. In Venetian opera, there is also the spoken text, which is found later in the French comic opera, for example. There is something very special in Venice: it is the relationship between comedy and tragedy.
The staging has always occupied an important place in Venice in the seventeenth century. Will he the same in your projects?
For now, we start research work on set design in Venice. Part of my own research focuses on Giacomo Torelli, for example - Benjamin Lazar and his future staging of the Egisto Cavalli - to understand how Venice invented the modern stage design with the engineer of the Arsenal. At first, Torelli learned to handle the ropes and machinery, but he was also an intellectual who built great artist its first theater in 1641 in Venice, Teatro Novissimo. It had the first machines with hoist systems and wheels that allowed the rapid changes and view the decorations. It could have up to ten sets on the scene. The fact that one is forced to Venice to place these machines over the scenes and not in the basement, of course. He had to improve all these techniques, including dragons, fantasy animals, disappearances. All that is born in Venice. Not only did these Torelli sets, but still he had the intelligence to be published engravings which he dedicated to the principal sovereigns Europeans, including Ferdinand de 'Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, great enemy of Venice - it was aware of the scale more than Venetian of his inventions - as well as Cardinal Barberini in Rome, a great patron of music that was causing major opera productions and instrumental. Finally, he went to Paris and worked at the Royal Palace. He was the first designer and director of operas performed in Paris as the Finta Pazza Sacrati and those of Cavalli. It was the first to develop what is known today about the equipment and sets. Vigarani, and all Berain those that followed have copied. Thus the boards of the decor Cadmus et Hermione by Jean Berain Are virtually identical to those of the Finta Pazza . Finally, Torelli participated in the design of imaging louis-fourth during his stay in France, for its staging of the Ballet de la Nuit who signed the king's victory over the rebellious, where the King appeared in Sun for the first time. Subsequently, Torelli worked with Molière's unfortunate for . Then he was banished for having worked for Fouquet and ended his days in Fano, his hometown, where he founded the Teatro de la Fortuna Theatre as its ideal.
When and in what form you put up a festival?
In 2011 revolve different Inaugural events. Initially, it will be concerts that will be representative of the mission is being conducted and the story you want to tell. Their theme will Awakening passions - It Risveglio degli affetti - the birth of the Venetian baroque. This is an opportunity, between June and September, to receive for the first time Venice a number of great artists, a first for them, which I hope will be their happiness, the organizers, the public and Venice.
In what places?
Baroque theaters were all burned. We can not play as operas in their time. The projects will be realized in the lyrical Scuola Grande, beautiful rooms with a real musical history. I think particularly at the Scuola di San Rocco which are expressed Monteverdi and Cavalli. We will tailor the choice of venue directory. Music Room and madrigals to react within Palazzi, as they did then. We are fortunate, again, that the owners are at our disposal private palaces. This is important for the Foundation and open places that are usually closed to the public, which is of particular interest. Furthermore, we will work in one of the finest palaces in Venice, Pisani, with his two beautiful courtyards for outdoor concerts. It will also invest the Ridotto, the large playroom which gave operas, at least their best scenes. For sacred music, churches abound. There in a beautiful, Venice, some of which have magnificent organs, allowing the directory to discover this instrument.
What place will occupy the old instruments?
Much has been done on the instruments themselves. In Venice, there are two interesting collections. The first in the church of San Maurizio, a permanent exhibition of instruments. The second in the small museum of Vivaldi's Pietà. Rather, we reflect on the instrumentation. Today the tendency is to play the operas of the seventeenth century expanded with orchestras, performances taking place in venues far larger than those of origins. As we give in places close to the dimensions of the context of their creation, we will return to the workforce at the time. There is also the question of continuo. Some concerts will be a without keyboard continuo, which was done much at the time, works well in places most intimate Venetian and gives color to another directory.
The Centre will produce he drives? How have you helped launch Combattimenti , the last CD Harmonic Poem?
The draft of the disk was already very late before I got the idea for the Centre. I did absolutely nothing. It's an idea Vincent Dumestre. I had the pleasure of working on the creation of the Combat of Tancred from Venice. As I was there, Vincent asked me to research the background and creation in the Palazzo Mocenigo. This CD highlights that Venice is the source of a particular style: the stile concitato the first use, in writing, of pizzicato. The Combat of Tancred text is incredibly theatrical, opera mini to be between opera and madrigal without being in the same issue as the performance. Unique work, the synthesis is a bit of know-how of the Monteverdi recitar cantando , this way of making theater with music. Without aria, he meets the same relationship to the text that sang the operas of Lully - or, much later, Tristan and Pelleas . Do not forget that these works were born of Italian recitar cantando early seventeenth century.
In conclusion?
simply say that the creation of the Centre for Venetian Baroque Music is the fruit of marvelous encounters. It is not just a research center, but also a festival that true dialogue with the audience, he recounted a story where even imagine what Venice.
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