Festival Les BaroQuiales - 2025 édition
From 04 July to 12 July France / Alpes-Maritimes
For its 20th edition, the baroque music festival Les BaroQuiales takes us to an exceptional heritage setting: baroque cathedrals and chapels, cloisters, village squares and the Trophy towering above the Mediterranean, for a total immersion in the golden age of English music, combining music, theatre, history and heritage, right up to contemporary jazz. France and England, a history of cousins, a musical history, made up of rivalries and shared passions, wars and diplomatic marriages, where music has always served as a bridge and a common language.
Les BaroQuiales invites you on a journey of discovery throughout the region from 4 to 12 July: in the village of Roquebrune, La Turbie, Breil-sur-Roya and Sospel, along the ‘Strada Reale’, the historic royal road that linked Turin to Nice through the Roya-Bévéra mountains.
The 2025 edition will focus on showcasing a rich and varied musical heritage, where legends, popular culture and erudition intermingle; a musical universe close to us that can be found in today's major television series, from Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings, which offer us a landscape similar to the Roya-Bévéra mountains. It will highlight the musical abundance of the Stuart Restoration and the advent of English musical genius: Henry Purcell, superstar of his time. But music does not stop at the doors of palaces and churches: drinking songs (catches), Irish ballads, Scottish songs and other traditional folk tunes from Scotland and Ireland are rearranged by English composers and skilfully distilled into the music of their time.
The Bulgarian ensemble Dai Monti Verdi will fill the vaults of Sospel Cathedral with English and European madrigals, while the talented violinist Patrick Oliva will share with us the reverie of a solitary violin, from Telemann to Playford, under the olive trees of the Notre-Dame-du-Mont chapel in Breil-sur-Roya. With Body & Soul and soprano Ellen Giacone, boundaries will fade away under the imposing majesty of the Trophy of Augustus. The sweet, lyrical voice blends with original arrangements, sometimes baroque, sometimes jazzy, to gracefully traverse the ages, giving pride of place to freedom of interpretation and improvisation.
In the village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, the company La Semeuse and the ensemble La Chambre invite you on a grand musical and theatrical journey in search of a lost work. An immersive show for all. As every year, you will also find the festival film, the baroque mass, the concert snack, and many other events highlighting the local associative and cultural fabric. We will remain true to our DNA of transmission with, as every year, a major opera workshop open to amateur choristers, based on Purcell, and, as the grand finale of this edition, the closing show on 12 July in Sospel, with a performance of King Arthur, one of Henry Purcell's absolute masterpieces of English baroque music, conducted by Jean-Sébastien Beauvais and directed by Luc Betton.
