Classical concerts featuring

Avi Avital

Passeggiata Veneziana

Venice Baroque Orchestra, photo: Luca Valenta Although Venice boasts the famous historic La Fenice theatre, it yearns for the lost buildings where the early drammi per musica were staged. Some time ago, an initiative arose to restore there the world’s first public opera house, San Cassiano, which made opera – previously known only to the nobility – accessible to anyone who could afford a ticket. San Cassiano is set to attract locals and visitors once again, becoming a centre for Baroque opera staged in ‘historically informed’ performance. The orchestra that will take up residence in the reconstructed theatre will be the famous Venice Baroque Orchestra, directed by its founder, Andrea Marcon, an eminent expert on early keyboard instruments. During our Warsaw concert, the artists, including outstanding virtuosos of singing (Núria Rial) and mandolin (Avi Avital), will present impressions of the Venetian soundscape, experienced during an imaginary walk through the Italian city. They will perform, among other things, instrumental concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, the sounds of which could be heard by passers-by from the interiors of Venetian palaces, churches and theatres, as well as popular songs of the gondoliers, the so-called canzoni da battello, which travellers have delighted in for centuries, often writing them down and bringing them home as souvenirs of their trip to the ‘most singing city in the world’.