Critic's choice
Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia - 2024-2025 Season
The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía proposes a journey of 417 years in the history of music during its 2024-2025 season. From Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) to Francisco Coll's Ciudad sin sueño (2024), Les Arts offers a full programme of opera, zarzuela, ballet, Lied, symphonic music, recitals, flamenco and world music.
Thus, Lisette Oropesa in Manon opens a season in which the most recent contemporary opera, The Golden Stool, coexists with classics of the repertoire such as Il trovatore and Der fliegende Holländer. The season also includes the conclusion of the ‘Tudor Trilogy’ with a new production of Roberto Devereux; Robert Carsen’s impressive staging of Dialogues des Carmélites, and two appealing double bills: a new production of L'heure espagnole/Gianni Schicchi by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier,and Cabaré Pierrot.
Opera stars such as Charles Castronovo, Piero Pretti, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Artur Ruciński, Nicholas Brownlee, lead the casts conducted by prestigious musicians such as James Gaffigan, Maurizio Benini, Leonardo García Alarcón or Riccardo Minasi.
Dutch National Opera : Le Lacrime di Eros from 15th to 21st November
In Renaissance Florence, composers, philosophers, poets, choreographers, painters and inventors joined forces to create a new art form: opera. The rich repertoire of composers such as Striggio, Malvezzi, Marenzio, Peri, Caccini, Cavalieri and, somewhat later, a young Claudio Monteverdi bears musical witness to the birth of the new genre. In their music, love is far from being something sweetly sentimental; it is inextricably linked with a dark shadow. Operating masterfully at the interface of opera with performance art and the visual arts, Romeo Castellucci will present the many faces of love in a production that has all the ingredients for a striking and hauntingly beautiful experience.
Dialogue between Renaissance music and electronic music
Raphaël Pichon and his Pygmalion ensemble enact a dialogue between original material from the Renaissance and the electronic music of Scott Gibbons. In his new compositions, Gibbons amplifies and distorts the sounds of the performers’ bodies to explore human passion in all its tenderness and cruelty.
Valletta Baroque Festival : from 9th to 25th January 2025
Since its launch in 2013, the Valletta Baroque Festival has treated audiences to a unique event featuring some of the best soloists and ensembles in the baroque music scene.
Spanning over three weeks, the festival offers a quintessential experience of all that is Baroque as it takes place in exquisite venues such as St John’s Co-Cathedral, The Verdala Palace, Palazzo Parisio, and Teatru Manoel to name a few. These venues are authentic Baroque spaces adorned with lavish decor, sculptures and paintings that are typical of this period.
Organised by Festivals Malta every January, under the artistic direction of Kenneth Zammit Tabona, the festival highlights the enormous versatility of the baroque idiom and its mass appeal. Above all the festival’s strength lies in the wonderful baroque settings that one finds in Valletta and the Maltese archipelago; a precious legacy that each and every one of us Maltese treasure.