Brochure Utrecht Early Music Festival 2019
Napoli – Music’s Forgotten Capital (23 August – 1 September 2019)
Napoli – Music’s Forgotten Capital (23 August – 1 September 2019)
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Foreword<br />
NAPOLI<br />
MUSIC'S FORGOTTEN<br />
CAPITAL<br />
Xavier Vandamme<br />
director-manager<br />
Naples, lying in the shadow of Vesuvius and with enchanting<br />
Capri close by, was already a popular hub of pleasure<br />
and entertainment in ancient Greece. The city boasts an<br />
extremely rich and largely untapped musical heritage.<br />
Today we grossly underestimate the importance of Naples.<br />
We see a city which, following Italian unification,<br />
when it suddenly lost its status as capital, fell victim to an<br />
almost fatal anarchy. Who could still imagine that for centuries<br />
the world’s eyes were fixed on Naples? That this<br />
was a centre of artistic renewal which spread throughout<br />
Europe? That its four conservatoires supplied the entire<br />
continent with instrumentalists, composers, castrati and<br />
other singers?<br />
Naples was a city with over five hundred churches, with<br />
countless religious organizations and, for a brief period in<br />
the 18th century, four opera houses functioning simultaneously.<br />
<strong>Music</strong> could be heard everywhere.<br />
This festival juxtaposes Naples’ present and past. We see<br />
the city where Mozart discovered opera buffa, but also<br />
today’s noisy and strange metropolis. We examine the<br />
unique social coherence which has for centuries ensured<br />
that high and low culture have gone hand in hand. And<br />
we look towards the future, because it turns out that Naples<br />
is a laboratory with ideas for tomorrow.
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