The Valletta Baroque Festival returns in full force with 36 concerts for the 11th edition in January 2023, following two abridged versions in the last two years, now gloriously revived in a post-pandemic scenario.

With an eclectic programme carefully curated by Baroque aficionado and artistic director Kenneth Zammit Tabona, the festival kickstarts Festivals Malta’s calendar of events with the crème de la crème of artists traveling from all over Europe to be part of one of the leading Baroque festivals in Europe. 

Charlie Siem

Year after year, the festival has strengthened its position as it has become an undeniable point of reference for early and classical music genres. The festival’s esteemeed reputation gets people out of their cosy homes and enthusiasts travel to Malta during the month of January, a month that the local hospitality industry describes as a shoulder month, to indulge in the magnificent world of Baroque. A holistic experience of sumptuous music, ostentatious palaces, churches and palazzos.

Spread over three weeks, from January 11-29, the festival opens with some of Handel’s musical masterpieces, The Dettingen Te Deum and other Handelian hits, performed by The Valletta Baroque Ensemble and KorMalta, set against the opulent backdrop of St John’s Co-Cathedral. 

Johanna Rose. Photo: Luis Castilla

The festival has a stellar line-up featuring some of the most prestigious early music artists and ensembles like Mahan Esfahani, Charlie Siem, Gabetta Consort with Valer Barna-Sabadus, Vasillis Varvaresos, Avi Avital, and many more. Following last year’s success, this year’s edition will also see the return of The Rock Troupers to the Manoel Theatre with their project BaRock. The perfect example for Kenneth Zammit Tabona’s vision to illustrate the versatile interpretation of the Baroque idiom. In the festival we see Baroque music combined with rock, jazz, and 20th-century and contemporary compositions. The Valletta Baroque Festival also includes unconventional works like Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri, Beware the Spider, and Kuhnau Biblical Sonatas. The festival closes off with a world-premiere of Italo Maltese composer Girolamo Abos’s Mass in G, performed by The Monteverdi Project and Cantarlontano under the musical direction of Marco Mencoboni.

Mahan Estafani

The festival has slowly been venturing out of Valletta into the spectacular churches and palazzos that adorn our beautiful island. This year the festival will take place in 21 different baroque venues around the island such as St John’s Co-Cathedral, The Refectory in the Archbishop’s Curia, San Anton Palace, The Verdala Palace, Palazzo Parisio, Teatru Manoel, The National Library, The Collegiate Basilica of St Helen in Birkirkara, Ta’ Giezu Church in Rabat, The Casino Maltese and many more. These venues undeniably embody the Maltese islands’ unique baroque DNA, which is what makes this festival authentic and unmissable.

The Valletta Baroque Festival is produced by Festivals Malta in collaboration with Teatru Manoel and Visit Malta. For more information and tickets visit https://www.festivals.mt/vbf.