Invitation to the Music and Art Festival “Vivat Curlandia!” of the Dukes of Courland and Semigallia during the Kettler Period

On 15 and 16 July 2017, for the second consecutive year, the Music and Art Festival “Vivat Curlandia!” of the Dukes of Courland and Semigallia during the Kettler period will take place at Bauska Castle, the Town Hall and Bauska Holy Spirit Church. During the festival, medieval and Renaissance music will be performed by musicians from Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Austria, Italy and France. Visitors will also have the opportunity to see the earliest opera by Giulio Caccini to have survived to the present day, “Euridice”.

The programme of Bauska’s “Vivat Curlandia!” festival will take place in a setting historically appropriate to its musical content: the performance of early music with historical instruments and costumes, in concert venues and atmospheres suited to the music, will allow today’s busy people to immerse themselves more naturally in the world of ancient values and enjoy it. The festival is organised by Māris Kupčs, Latvia’s leading expert and performer of early music, in cooperation with the Bauska Castle Museum and the Bauska Cultural Centre. Over two days, 10 different musical events will delight everyone interested in the music, art and costumes of the medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque periods.

Participation in the festival has been confirmed by Spain’s outstanding medieval music ensemble Eloqventia; the early music ensemble Chiaroscuro from Lithuania; the internationally acclaimed early music ensemble Neymann Ensemble, whose members come from Latvia, Austria and Italy; the early dance group Galms; harpist and specialist in rhetoric and historical gestures Katerina Antonenko; harpsichordist Ernests Neimanis; Ilze Grēvele (soprano); Agnese Kanniņa-Liepiņa and Laura Šarova (baroque violins); Anatolijs Grindenko (viola da gamba); Māris Kupčs (artistic director); and Valmiera Drama Theatre actor Ivo Martinsons. A special highlight is the legendary medieval music ensemble Alla francesca of Paris’s Centre de musique médiévale de Paris, which will give its first concert in Latvia, bringing the festival’s marathon of ten concerts to a close on the evening of 16 July.

The festival will open on Saturday afternoon, 15 July, in the courtyard of Bauska Town Hall with a theatrical performance that will also be of interest to families with children. That same evening, the Latvian premiere of Giulio Caccini’s opera “Euridice”, written in 1600, will take place at the Bauska Cultural Centre. The opera is based on the legendary Greek mythological story of the musician Orpheus, who journeys to the underworld to save his beloved wife Eurydice, fatally bitten by a snake. The Riga Early Music Centre and the “Vivat Curlandia!” festival have become a centre for historical opera productions of the European Opera Academy; consequently, the opera production will offer the opportunity to hear some of Europe’s most promising young-generation specialists. 

Those who are more interested in dance will have the opportunity on Sunday, 16 July, to see the concert programme “Festa vita”, or “Celebration of Life”, by the early dance group Galms. It is based on an edition of John Playford’s book “The English Dancing Master”, first published in 1651.

Tickets for the “Vivat Curlandia!” festival events are already available at the Bauska Castle Museum ticket offices and at “Biļešu paradīze” outlets throughout Latvia. Ticket prices start at EUR 6. 

Bauska was chosen as the festival venue because the castles built by the Dukes of Courland and Semigallia in the Zemgale region were the first in the territory of Latvia to represent the secular architecture and professional art of the Northern Renaissance. They brought with them the ideas, culture and artistic impulses of Renaissance-era Europe, which unquestionably influenced the development of cultural processes not only in Zemgale. 

Today, Bauska Castle is the only surviving example of secular architectural heritage from the Renaissance and Mannerist periods that the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries were unable to destroy completely and that materially represents these periods in Latvia’s cultural history. 

The festival is supported by the Bauska Municipal Government, the Bauska Castle Museum, the State Cultural Capital Foundation and Musica Baltica.

For further information:

Māris Kupčs

Tel. +371 25714770

Email: info@earlymusic.lv

www.earlymusic.lv

https://www.facebook.com/earlymusiclv/