Baroque music in Faenza

During May 2005 the town of Faenza hosted the first production of Creator, an ambitious festival of sacred music promoted and organized by the town and diocese of Faenza, together with Accademia Bizantina, the well-known period-instrument ensemble from Ravenna. Romano Valentini, President and Music Director of the festival, said: 'In the choice of a sacred repertory this initiative proposes an interesting reading of the whole European musical tradition'. The festival aims to rediscover neglected works and recontextualize masterpieces which, over the past 100 years, have often been performed out of their original context.

This latter aspect was the theme of the first concert of the festival, held on Sunday 8 May. The occasion was the Episcopal Mass celebrated by the Bishop of Faenza in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, patron saint of the town. Stagione Armonica, conducted by Sergio Bales-tracci, performed the five-part mass by Giacomo Caris-simi, on the 400th anniversary of his birth in 1605. The attendance on this occasion was remarkable, the audience filling every corner of the splendid Faenza Cathedral, testifying to the validity of the initiative.

The second concert involved Accademia Bizantina, conducted by Ottavio Dantone, in a very popular concert centred on Vivaldi's Gloria in D, RV589, and two instrumental works by Corelli, who was born in the neighbouring town of Fusignano, and who is the composer most performed by Accademia Bizantina. As always Dantone's skill as a conductor exalted the emotional contrasts that pervade the pages of Vivaldi's works, and in Monica Piccinini and Marina De Liso he found two singers who displayed mastery of this expressiveness-on the one hand, the joyful praise of God, and on the other, the tortuous introspection associated with human frailties. An excellent performance was given by the trumpet player Primo Luca Marzana, who distinguished himself as the soloist in the lesser-known Sonata a quattro by Corelli for solo trumpet, two violins and basso continuo.

The main event of the festival took place on 14 May. This opened with a musicological round table entitled 'The dramatic composition of the oratorio: Metastasio, Hasse and Sant'Elena al Calvario'. Owing to the withdrawal of Francesco Degrada, who within a month succumbed to a serious illness, the discussion was led by Raffaele Mellace (author of a recent book on Hasse published in Italy by L'Epos) who, after a brief introduction by Paolo Fabbri (University of Ferrara), described the salient events in the career of the German composer, pointing out the decidedly Italian features of his style, an 'anomaly' which probably cost him a sort of damnatio memoriae. This enlightening talk provided the large audience present in the Sala Bigari of Faenza town hall with a deeper insight into the controversial figure of Hasse in the light of the latest musicological discoveries. A lecture by Anna Laura Bellina (University of Padua) focused on the history and the symbolic value of the figure of St Helen, the protagonist of the oratorio. After the seminar the church of Sant'Agostino was the setting for the first modern performance of Hasse's Sant'Elena al Calvario in the original version given in Dresden in 1746. The commendable performance of both the choir Stagione Armonica, under the direction of Balestracci, and the orchestra of the Accademia Bizantina conducted by Ottavio Dantone, not to mention the excellence of the soloists, all contributed to realize the intensely melodious idiom and delicately introspective vein of this opera. This provided the best proof of the vitality of Hasse's music and the validity of the philological research which the organizers hope will be continued, in future Creator festivals, to focus on many other composers, both well and less well known.