Lerici, the pearl of Liguria’s Levante region, will host the international music festival from which it takes its name for the seventh time from July 21st to August 6th.

The 2023 edition of the Lerici Music Festival represents a very special opportunity for me. The anniversary of Maria Callas’ birth gave me the ‘la’ to create a programme entirely dedicated to women in music. ‘Protagonists’ will therefore be great performers, composers, and icons of theatre, literature and film. And, of course, there will be a tribute to Callas, with an extraordinary Tosca in concert form entrusted to the voices of Carmen Giannattasio, Joseph Calleja and Sir Bryn Terfel (an eagerly awaited return to Lerici after last year’s success). In short, it will be a festival full of surprises and with a varied artistic offering. The programme includes evenings dedicated to opera, symphonic concerts, chamber concerts, jazz, crossover and musical theatre performances to enrich the magical setting of the Golfo dei Poeti. Two weeks dedicated to great music in which Lerici will host young talents and big international stars in residence. This confirms the growth of a festival that is becoming an important reality on the Italian and international music scene.

With these words, the artistic director, Gianluca Marcianò, presents the 2023 edition of the Lerici Music Festival, a reality born out of a dream for him: to bring Lerici, his home town, to the centre of the international music scene.

The relevance of the Lerici Music Festival also emerges from the words spent to describe it by Leonardo Paoletti, the Mayor of Lerici, who played a decisive role in making it possible: The Lerici Music Festival is undoubtedly the cultural event of reference for our town. We are proud to host international artists again this year on our stage dedicated to classical music. For Lerici, the Lerici Music Festival is an expression of its cultural DNA as well as an image of high quality that our territory deserves and that projects our identity beyond national borders.

Among the novelties, which will contribute to the growth of the ambitious cultural operation called Lerici Music Festival and to the enhancement of the territory that hosts it, is the choice of four significant venues for the concerts: Villa Marigola, a historic building dating back to the second half of the 13th century, built on the top of the promontory separating the two inlets of Lerici and San Terenzo; the Rotonda Vassallo, the town’s nerve centre located on the seafront; the Sala Consiliare of the Lerici Town Hall; and Piazza Santa Croce, in La Serra di Lerici.

The programme for this 2023 edition includes relevant pages that, spanning the centuries, can be traced back to some of the most famous composers of the operatic, symphonic and chamber music repertoire. Prominent are those signed by female figures such as Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann and Emilie Mayer. Composers still little performed today, but significant for their mark on the history of the art of sound. Portraits of women in music, ‘protagonists’, in fact, just like the many performers who will take turns on the Lerici stage to perform their music.

The theme “Protagonists” immediately comes to the fore: to inaugurate the seventh edition of the LMF on July 21st at Villa Marigola, the theatrical performance entitled Letters for Clara, with music by Clara Schumann, performed on the piano by Costanza Principe, while the narration is entrusted to Sandra Ceccarelli. It continues on July 22nd, in the spaces of Piazza Santa Croce, La Serra locality, with the Complete Preludes for Piano Solo by Sergei Rachmaninov in the reading by Ukrainian pianist, YouTube star Valentina Lisitsa. July 23rd will instead be devoted to a Conversation on the Violin as Icon by Florian Leonhard, a British-born luthier, dealer, restorer and expert on stringed instruments. On July 24th, instead, spreading through the centre of Lerici will be the jazz notes of Work song, a concert scheduled at the Rotonda Vassallo that will see an ensemble of jazz stars including Lorenzo Cimino, trombone, and Bebo Ferra, guitar, on stage at the LMF, together with the voice of Cristina Zavalloni. The programme continues with three dates on which – in three different venues, Lerici Town Council Chamber, Villa Marigola and Rotonda Vassallo – the real stars will be composers from the past, such as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, on July 26th, established instrumentalists such as Miriam Prandi, who will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suites for cello solo no. 4 and no. 5, on July 27th, and Quattro artiste per Beethoven, on July 28th. On the latter date, Costanza Principe on piano, Clarissa Bevilacqua on violin, and Miriam Prandi, on cello will perform as soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto together with the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Glass Marcano, a young conductor of Venezuelan origin – whose talent came to the attention of the international music scene thanks to the first edition of the Parisian La Maestra Competition. Again, on July 30th, the hymn to female talent in music continues with the pianist of Greek origin, protégé of Martha Argerich, Theodosia Ntokou, soloist in Concerto No. 2 for piano and orchestra by Dmitrij Šostakóvič, with her the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, on the podium Riccardo Bisatti. There will be two evenings dedicated to opera music: on July 31st, when great performers of the calibre of Carmen Giannattasio, Sir Bryan Terfel, and Joseph Calleja will present Stories and Arias from the World of Opera, and on August 3rd, an evening of tribute to the opera icon Maria Callas, whose 100th birthday it is. On this occasion, the three opera stars, accompanied by the Orchestra della Toscana conducted by Gianluca Marcianò, will give the audience in Lerici a further demonstration of their vocal talents by performing arias and duets from Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca. Another homage to 19th-century composers Fanny Mendelssohn and Emilie Mayer will be the focus of the chamber concert on August 4th. While closing the 2023 edition of the LMF will be the bandoneonist Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi, on August 4th, in a concert dedicated to Milva to the music of Astor Piazzolla, and on August 6th in an evening dedicated to film music, together with the soprano Carly Paoli, the violin of Elly Suh, the Pietrod Archi ensemble and the host, Gianluca Marcianò, as pianist and conductor.

The LMF musical offer includes, also for this edition, 17 dates that will colour the heart of the renowned Ligurian resort with music. These include symphonic and chamber concerts, musical theatre and jazz performances. In addition, collateral events connected to the festival include meetings on musical themes and a further series of concerts set in the most characteristic and charming villages and places in Lerici.

Tickets can be purchased at the box office, open to the public at the festival venue in Via Giannoni 6, Lerici, and through the Vivaticket ticketing circuit.

For further information on the programme: www.lericimusicfestival.com