FESTIVAL

REVELATIONS!

The annual Cape Town Baroque Festival, presented by the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra, will take place from 21 to 24 September 2024.

The programming of the 2024 Cape Town Baroque Festival – titled Revelations! – revolves around the idea of concealing and revealing, which permeates the individual programmes on many different levels.

In the award winning ‘Variations’ programme (Event 1) the focus is on sets of variations or divisions that are built on thematic material originating from songs or hymns. Often the elaborations on the themes in these compositions became so intricate that the encoded themes were obscured, and are not recognisable on first hearing. These layers will be revealed in a very expressive way in the programme!

In a very exciting, and possibly first South African, performance of French allegorical late 17^th century mini-opera ‘Les arts florissants’ by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Event 2), we explore the idea of a first live hearing of a historical piece presented to a modern audience: early music experienced as new music. This also serves as a reminder that during the baroque period works were not so often re-performed as in modern-day concert practice, and that audiences were mostly exposed to newly composed works during concerts. In the opera, the characters Music, Poetry, Painting and Architecture resolve a dispute between Peace and Discord.

The ‘Venice, Vivaldi, and the Ospedale della Pietà’ programme (Event 3) will focus on Vivaldi and the performances at the Ospedale della Pietà, where the performers were situated in the loft of the chapel and was partially hidden behind metal grilles. This obscuring of the performers added a level of mystery to these performances, which contributed to it becoming a very popular tourist attraction during the 18^th century. The concert will take place in the SA Sendinggestigmuseum where the tables will be turned: with the musicians on the lofts and the audience on ground level!

Click here for a downloadable version of the programme.

Festival Passes

We are offering a limited number of discounted festival passes, which include access to all of the festival events. The passes are priced as follows: R700, R600 (pensioners), R250 (students). To book your pass, email [email protected].

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