Music in the Veneto: Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Palladio (23–28 June 2014)

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Music in the Veneto Monteverdi • Vivaldi • Palladio 23–28 June 2014

Six private concerts in the Veneto, in buildings designed or inspired

by Andrea Palladio. Performances by I Fagiolini, Andreas Scholl, Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, La Venexiana & La Serenissima.

Music in the Veneto Monteverdi • Vivaldi • Palladio 23–28 June 2014

Music of the Veneto

Six concerts of music by Monteverdi, Vivaldi and others who worked in north-east Italy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

Palladian concert venues

Exclusive access

Admission to the concerts is exclusive to those who take the complete package of arrangements which includes hotel, meals, flights from the UK (optional) and coach transport.

Beautiful historic buildings designed by Andrea Palladio or his followers – four villas, a church and a theatre.

Numbers are limited to around 140, though the size of the villas means that for three concerts the audience is divided and the concert repeated.

Outstanding artists

The spoken word

The performers – from Italy, Britain and Germany – are among the world’s finest exponents of this repertoire. They include Adrian Chandler, Claudio Cavina, Robert Hollingworth, Andreas Scholl; La Venexiana, I Fagiolini, La Serenissima, Sonatori della Gioiosa Marca.

There are lectures on cultural and musical history and on-site comment about the buildings by Palladio experts.

Accommodation

There is a choice of four hotels. Three are in the centre of Vicenza, one of the loveliest historic towns in Italy, and one is a villa in the hills outside the town.

The concerts

Monteverdi’s Orfeo in the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, the first opera in the first theatre.

Counter-tenor Andreas Scholl with devotional Vivaldi in a Palladianstyle church in Vicenza.

Monteverdi and Gesualdo madrigals with I Fagiolini in Scamozzi’s La Rocca Pisana.

I Fagiolini perform sixteenthcentury Venetian comic songs and scenes in a villa by Palladio.

Music by Palladio’s contemporaries performed in the architect’s Villa Godi Malinverni.

La Serenissima play Vivaldi concertos under the Tiepolo ceiling in the Villa Pisani at Stra.

Cover illustration, and above: Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, 18th-century engraving.

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Introduction

Music: indispensable for villa life

Renaissance villas were built for recreation, for escape from the pressures and unpleasantnesses of urban life.

Situated in countryside ‘far from the madding crowd’, they provided the setting for artistic, intellectual and idle pursuits, from philosophical discussion and poetry readings to gustatory indulgence and assorted jolly japes.

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

The villa phenomenon

As a building type, villas are relatively unencumbered by mundane practicalities.

Even though many of them were enthroned at the centre of working farms, with contiguous barns and stables, none of Palladio’s villas could properly be called farmhouses. Their patrons were the leading nobles and gentry, rich merchants, men of state, retired ambassadors.

Agriculture was a subsidiary interest.

Above all, there was music. The most immediately transporting of the arts, in its manifold variety of mood and meaning music was an indispensable accompaniment to the rural idyll of villa life.

Many embody something approaching pure architectural form. The greatest of villa architects was of course Andrea Palladio (1508–1580); two of the concerts are in buildings by him. The most influential architect in the western world, he cast a particularly long shadow in his native Veneto, but his exalted example did not unduly inhibit the imaginations of his successors as there is plenty of variety in the villas of the region. Palladio’s are understated, even modest, but unfailingly monumental and supremely beautiful.

The great age of the villa in Italy lasted from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth: happily this coincides with the great age of music in Venice and the Veneto.

Matching music with place

This festival recreates something of the Arcadian villa experience by placing appropriate music into a selection of the loveliest villas and other buildings in the Veneto. Some of the world’s finest musicians specialising in Italian Renaissance and Baroque repertoire perform a wide range of music apposite to the individual setting, ranging from the frivolous to the austere, from intimate chamber music to celebratory fanfare.

Matching music with place, that is the key feature of the festivals Martin Randall Travel has been creating for over two decades.

Right: plan and elevation of a villa from Quattro libri dell’architettura by Andrea Palladio, 1570.

‘The music was almost unbelievable. Unique.

Unrepeatable. Breathtaking.’

J.M. & S.M., West Sussex, who travelled on an MRT music festival in 2013.

Contents

The Programme............................ 4–7

Hotels, Prices.................................... 9

The Speakers..................................... 8

Pre-festival tours....................... 10–12

The Festival Package......................... 8

Booking form........................... 13–14

Travelling to the festival................... 8

Booking details............................... 15

The Programme

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

‘I will carry the memory of the concerts with me for many years to come. I cannot imagine a better combination of music, performers and settings.’

I.K., Alberta, who travelled on an MRT music festival in 2013.

Monteverdi & Gesualdo

to no patron and underlined his status as occupant of Europe’s top musical job. It includes the great madrigal cycle, Incenerite spoglie, written on the death of a soprano friend, and presented works for solo voices and accompaniment in a new musical style.

The pinnacle of the exotic madrigal

Villa Pisani ‘La Rocca’, Lonigo

I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth (director)

By contrast, the music by Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa (1566–1613), a Neapolitan aristocrat with connections to the court at Ferrara, stayed firmly in the a capella tradition, but pushed the boundaries of harmonic daring to completely new limits.

With its striking hilltop site, La Rocca (designed 1576) is perhaps the most famous of Italian Palladian villas not by Palladio himself, being the creation of his best pupil and assistant, Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548–1616). Open to the elements through an oculus in the dome and intended only for occasional entertainments, this remarkable building approaches the status of pure architecture, untrammelled by functional compromises. It remains privately owned.

Founded in 1986 while its members were students at Oxford (the name a satirical reference to the Early Music world), I Fagiolini have achieved world-wide fame with performances memorable as much for their drama as for musical excellence.

Their repertoire is mainly Renaissance, and mainly Italian, but also encompasses the twentieth century. In addition to 19 CDs they have released three DVDs, L’Amfiparnaso, the sensational The Full Monteverdi and How Like An Angel.

Exactly 400 years ago in 1614, recently arrived in Venice, Monteverdi (1567–1643) published his last book of fivevoice madrigals. Having been increasingly discontent with his employment at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, his book bowed

Singers, 18th-century etching after Guercino.

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The Programme

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014 Vicenza, from A Dawdle in Lombard & Venice by Inglis Sheldon-Williams 1928.

Devotional Vivaldi Liturgical masterpieces for counter-tenor & orchestra

Chiesa di San Filippo Neri, Vicenza Andreas Scholl (counter-tenor) Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) was as accomplished a composer of spiritually uplifting devotional music as of instrumental compositions and opera – after all, he was a priest. The programme includes Vivaldi settings of Nisi Dominus and Stabat Mater. They were composed while he was maestro di concerti at the Ospedale della Pietà, the orphanage for girls in Venice to which Il Prete Rosso (The Red Priest) brought Europe-wide fame through his musical activities.

Carnevale Veneziano Venice & the Veneto on holiday

Villa Contarini, Piazzola sul Brenta

I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth (director)

‘It might be a new Golden Age of the counter-tenor, but few can equal the sheer beauty of tone and dramatic instinct displayed

by Andreas Scholl’ (BBC Music Magazine, February 2012). For over two decades he has thrilled audiences worldwide with his opera and concert performances, and dazzled with a series of extraordinary recordings. He brings to his art not just a voice of incomparable beauty and expressiveness but also an acute intelligence allied with historical understanding. A versatile and experimental artist – his latest acclaimed recording is of German Lieder – but with this programme he happily returns to his core repertoire, the Italian Baroque.

Venice at Carnival: six to ten weeks of misbehaviour between Christmas and Lent. The population doubled in size and the best musicians and commedia dell’arte groups consorted with patricians and princes in whose palazzi their ticketed performances took place. I Fagiolini re-create an evening of mascarate, madrigals and musical mayhem by Giovanni Croce’s own close harmony group of St. Mark’s singing men.

Caricatures by Croce himself; a trip along the Brenta canal courtesy of a supposed Benedictine monk; Andrea Gabrieli’s dialect lament calling on the lagoon’s seafood to bewail the death of Willaert; excerpts from Vecchi’s madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnaso (Twin Peaks).

Founded in Treviso (a city in the Veneto awarded during the Renaissance the epithet ‘Marca Gioiosa’), the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca have become one of the most acclaimed period instrument groups in Italy, renowned both for their Vivaldi interpretations and for their study of lesser-known composers of the Veneto.

The Contarini were one of the richest and most powerful of Venetian clans, and their villa at Piazzola sul Brenta spreads around courts and gardens and canals with commensurate splendour. At its heart is a villa of the 1540s, controversially attributed to Palladio, but it was much extended and ornamented in several campaigns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, resulting in the most Baroque of the great villas of the Veneto. The concert takes place in a purpose-built music room.

The Church of St Filippo Neri is situated in Corso Palladio, the main street of Vicenza. Though it was built in 1730, a century and a half after Palladio’s death, and the façade was added a hundred years after that, essentially it is Palladian in style, demonstrating the extraordinary longevity of the great architect’s influence in the Veneto.

The tragic mode is a necessity for vocal ensembles specialising in Renaissance music, and I Fagiolini are no exception, but they are distinguished also by their talent for comedy.

Above left: I Fagiolini (©Danny Higgins). Above: Andreas Scholl (©James McMillan and Decca).

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The Programme

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

The Sound of Palladio

L’Orfeo in the Teatro Olimpico

Sixteenth-century music for strings

The first opera in the first theatre

Villa Godi Malinverni, Lugo di Vicenza

Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza

Nestling in foothills twenty miles north of Vicenza, the Villa Godi Malinverni is the earliest major villa design attributable to Andrea Palladio. The monumentality of its impact arises from its simple, almost cuboid massing and sophisticated set of proportions. Inside it is richly frescoed by Giovanni Battista Zelotti. The concert is by kind permission of Christian G. Malinverni.

Designed in 1580, the year of his death, the Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s last major project. It was also the first purposebuilt theatre of modern times. Clearly based on his studies of Ancient Roman theatres (though with the semicircular bank of seating squashed by the refusal of the neighbour to sell some land), a roof adapts the model to modern conveniences.

Construction continued for five years under the supervision of Vincenzo Scamozzi, who also designed the splendid backdrop of perspectival streets which represented Thebes for a performance of Oedipus Rex. This is a unique survival, and can now be viewed as an image of the ideal Renaissance city.

Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca

La Venexiana, Claudio Cavina (director)

The programme consists of music for strings composed by contemporaries of Andrea Palladio who worked in the Veneto.

These include Andrea Gabrieli and Giovanni Gabrieli, Giorgio Mainerio, Gioseffe Guami, Cesario Gussago, Cipriano de Rore, Tarquinio Merula and Giovanni Battista Fontana. The intention is to provide the aural counterpart to Palladio’s architecture, thereby to enhance the appreciation of both arts.

L’Orfeo, favola in musica was composed by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Alessandro Striggio for a performance at the Mantuan court in 1607. It is generally considered to be the first fully-fledged opera, yet continues to be rated as one of the finest operas of all time.

Along with their interpretations of masterpieces by Vivaldi, the Sonatori have devoted themselves to the re-discovery of the great musical tradition of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. They have performed in most of the major festivals and concert halls in Europe and a few beyond. They have made many recordings, some for the project ‘Musiche per Archi della Repubblica di Venezia’ (‘Music for Strings of the Republic of Venice’). They have won a Diapason d’Or and received the Premio Vivaldi.

The convergence of these phenomena of the highest historical and artistic importance makes this concert an exceptional cultural occasion.

This is a concert version of L’Orfeo, performed in two halves (with an interval between) of about 45 minutes.

La Venexiana, directed by Claudio Cavina, is one of the most celebrated Renaissance and Baroque vocal ensembles in the world today. Beginning primarily with madrigals, they established a new style in the performance of Italian early music, a warm, truly Mediterranean blend of textual declamation, rhetorical colour and harmonic refinement. They have recorded all three of Monteverdi’s surviving operas.

Left: Villa Godi Malinverni, detail from I Quattro Libri dell’architettura by Andrea Palladio.

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The Programme

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

More about the concerts

Exclusive access. All the concerts are planned and administered by Martin Randall Travel, and the audience consists exclusively of those who have taken the full festival package. The concerts are therefore effectively private.

Seating. Specific seats are not reserved. You sit where you want. Some seating may not be very comfortable.

Acoustics. This festival is more concerned with authenticity than with acoustical perfection. Some venues have idiosyncrasies or reverberations of the sort which are not found in modern purpose-built concert halls.

Heating/air-conditioning. None of the venues has efficient heating or air-conditioning.

Vivaldi Virtuoso Finale

Capacity. There will be about 140 participants on the festival. Three villas are too small to accommodate this number so the audience is divided and the concerts repeated.

Concertos for permutations of strings

Villa Pisani, Stra

Changes. Musicians may fall ill, venues may have to close for repairs, airlines may alter schedules: there are many circumstances which could necessitate changes to the programme. We ask you to be understanding should they occur.

La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler (violin, director) The concert is preceded by dinner for everyone in the seventeenth-century hall of the adjacent Villa Foscarini Rossi.

Built 1735–60 by Alvise Pisani, Venetian ambassador to France, the Villa Pisani at Strà is perhaps the grandest villa in Italy, palatial in its scale and ambition. Nevertheless, architecturally it is still firmly rooted in the Palladian tradition. It overlooks the Brenta Canal, the locus classicus of Venetian villa life. The ballroom, location of the concert, is a magnificent space with a ceiling fresco by Gianbattista Tiepolo.

Interior of the Teatro Olimpico.

The programme features a wealth of Vivaldi’s concertos written for multiple string soloists in various permutations – for two violins, for violin and cello, for violin and two cellos and for two violins and two cellos. The concertos display Vivaldi’s amazing mastery of writing for stringed instruments and without exception display the jubilance for which Il Prete Rosso has become famous.

British ensemble La Serenissima was formed in 1994 and is now firmly established as one of the leading exponents of the music of Antonio Vivaldi and his Italian contemporaries. Under the leadership of virtuoso violinist Adrian Chandler they perform with verve and passion, imparting their joy in the music to delighted audiences. Their CD Vivaldi: the French Connection won a Gramophone award in 2010. Nearly the entire repertoire of La Serenissima is edited by director Adrian Chandler from manuscript or contemporary printed sources.

Fitness for the festival

Coaches can rarely park directly outside the venues and there is often a walk of up to fifteen minutes, sometimes uphill, to reach the entrance. Many of the venues have steps and none have lifts.

Although there is no age limit for this festival, we stress the need for agility and ability to walk at a reasonable pace. If for any stage, including the airport, you would like the use of a wheelchair then this festival is unlikely to be suitable for you.

Photos, left to right: Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca; La Venexiana; La Serenissima (©Benjamin Harte).

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The Speakers, Festival Practicalities

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

Additional services

The Speakers

Arriving a day early

Jonathan Keates. Author and journalist whose books include biographies of Handel and Purcell, Italian Journeys and The Siege Of Venice. He writes programme notes for Covent Garden, ENO, WNO, Opera North and the Buxton Festival and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Trustee of the London Library. He is also Chairman of the Venice In Peril Fund. He has recently retired from teaching at the City of London School for 39 years.

We are offering the option of arriving at your hotel in Vicenza on 22nd June, a day before the festival starts. The price for this includes an extra night at your chosen festival hotel. Dinner is independent.

Extra dinner, and walks with an art historian

Full details for booking these will be sent to all festival participants at a later stage.

Dr Michael Douglas-Scott. Associate Lecturer in History of Art at Birkbeck College, University of London, specialising in 16th-century Italian art and architecture, and a regular lecturer for Martin Randall Travel on Palladio study tours. He lived in Rome and Paris for several years and studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Birkbeck. His articles have appeared in Arte Veneta, Burlington Magazine and Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.

Travelling to the festival

Flights between London Gatwick and Venice or Verona, or London Heathrow and Bologna are included in the price.

Option 1: Gatwick to Venice, a day early

22 June: depart Gatwick 14.00, arrive Venice Marco Polo 17.00 (BA 2584).

28 June: depart Venice 11.35, arrive Gatwick 12.45 (BA 2583).

Professor Fabrizio Nevola. Chair and Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, he specialises in the urban and architectural history of Early Modern Italy. He obtained his PhD at the Courtauld Institute and has held fellowships at the University of Warwick and Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti (Florence).

His publications include the award-winning Siena: Constructing the Renaissance City.

Option 2: Gatwick to Verona, a day early

22 June: depart Gatwick 15.50, arrive Verona 18.45 (BA 2598).

28 June: depart Verona 11.55, arrive Gatwick 12.50 (BA 2597).

Option 3: Heathrow to Bologna (supplement £50)

23 June: depart Heathrow 08.40, arrive Bologna 11.45 (BA 540).

28 June: depart Bologna 12.40, arrive Heathrow 13.50 (BA 541).

Option 4: no flights (reduction £190)

You can take the package without flights and make your own arrangements for joining and leaving the festival. The price reduction for this is £190.

The festival package The price includes:

You are welcome to join a coach transfer to your hotel in Vicenza should you decide to meet at one of the airports above at a time which coincides with one of our flight arrivals. We are also providing extra transfers at a cost of £40 per person oneway between Venice Airport and Vicenza to coincide with the following flights:

Admission to six concerts; hotel accommodation for five nights, with breakfast; flights from Heathrow or Gatwick to Venice, Verona or Bologna (you can opt out of these); travel by coach for airport transfers and, when necessary, to the concerts and included meals; four meals (or five for participants staying in the Villa Michelangelo) in selected restaurants and villas, with wine, water and coffee; talks on the music and architecture; a programme book with all practical details and background information; all tips and taxes; the assistance of a team of experienced festival staff.

Transfer 1, 22 June: BA 578, departs Heathrow 09.15, arrives Venice Marco Polo 12.25.

Transfer 2, 23 June: BA 578, departs Heathrow 09.15, arrives Venice Marco Polo 12.25.

Additional services which can be booked in advance: • • • •

Transfer 3, 28 June: BA 579 departs Venice 13.35, arrives Heathrow 14.50.

Arriving a day early (22nd June) Optional walks and visits with an art historian One extra dinner Pre-festival tours with art historians: The Veneto (14–21 June 2014) or Palladian Villas (17–22 June 2014). See pages 10–12 for full details of these tours.

M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L

If you arrive or depart at another time you will have to make your own way to and from Vicenza.

Pre-festival tours

If you are booking on one of the pre-festival tours, these have their own flight arrangements, which include the inbound flight at the end of the festival. Please see pages 10–12 for full details.

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Hotels, Prices

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

Hotels

Participants are accommodated in four hotels. Three are in the centre of Vicenza and one is in the hills four miles to the south.

There is some difference of standard and character but three are officially designated as of four-star category, and one is threestar. After exhaustive examination of all the hotels in the area, we have settled on four which we believe to be the most suitable for the festival. All prices given on this page are per person.

We recommend this hotel for single travellers as the more modern design features (a transparent shower cubicle within the bedroom, for example) may not be convenient for those sharing a room.

Campo Marzio, 4-star

A small establishment in the centre of Vicenza, opened in 2008.

It occupies a historic building but the decor is contemporary.

Rooms are quite small, especially the singles, and they have little storage space. All are air conditioned. There is a small bar but no lounge or restaurant; dinners are at restaurants within walking distance. Most rooms have queen size beds.

www.gboutiquehotel.com

Hotel Palladio, 4-star

Just outside a city gate of Vicenza, the Campo Marzio is well located, comfortable and excellently managed. A fairly undistinguished exterior screens attractively furnished, airconditioned bedrooms of a good size. Most have been recently refurbished in a contemporary style. Single bedrooms are small.

Staff are particularly helpful and friendly. There is no restaurant but dinners are in restaurants within walking distance.

www.hotel-palladio.it

Villa Michelangelo, 4-star

www.hotelcampomarzio.com

Occupying an 18th-century villa, this smart, well-run hotel in the Berici Hills is approximately four miles from the centre of Vicenza. Surrounded by five hectares of gardens, its tranquil hilltop position affords fine views. As is normal in converted historic buildings, rooms vary in size. All are air conditioned and decorated in classic style with restrained good taste. There is a good restaurant and an outdoor swimming pool.

G Boutique Hotel, 3-star

Although its striking stylishness is not for everybody – every conceivable surface, including the staff uniform, is a shade of black – G Boutique is comfortable, even luxurious, and welllocated for those who do not mind its pretentious vibe. This is the only other central hotel that matches MRT’s standards of service and facilities. All rooms are air conditioned. There is no restaurant; dinners are at restaurants within walking distance.

www.hotelvillamichelangelo.com

Prices ARRIVING 22 JUNE Prices are per person

Single room

Double for single occupancy

Superior double, single occupancy

Double or twin (2 sharing)

Superior double or twin (2 sharing)

Junior suite (2 sharing)

Suite (2 sharing)

Hotel Palladio

-

£2,870

-

£2,870

-

£3,060

-

G Boutique Hotel

-

£3,150

-

£2,740

-

-

-

Campo Marzio

£3,150

-

£3,430 (jnr suite)

-

-

£3,150

£3,380

Villa Michelangelo

£3,270

£3,620

£3,810

£3,270

£3,340

-

£3,600

ARRIVING 23 JUNE Prices are per person

Single room

Double for single occupancy

Superior double, single occupancy

Double or twin (2 sharing)

Superior double or twin (2 sharing)

Junior suite (2 sharing)

Suite (2 sharing)

Hotel Palladio

-

£2,740

-

£2,740

-

£2,930

-

G Boutique Hotel

-

£2,990

-

£2,610

-

-

-

Campo Marzio

£2,990

-

£3,280 (jnr suite)

-

-

£2,990

£3,250

Villa Michelangelo

£3,120

£3,460

£3,630

£3,120

£3,210

-

£3,460

info@martinrandall.co.uk

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Pre-festival tours

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

Palladian Villas The greatest house builder in history

Villa Foscari, ‘La Malcontenta’, 18th-century engraving.

17–22 June 2014 (ma 936) 6 days • £1,840 Lecturer: Professor Fabrizio Nevola A survey of nearly all the surviving villas and palaces designed by Andrea Palladio, the world’s most influential architect.

Stay throughout in Vicenza, Palladio’s home town and site of many of his buildings.

With many special appointments, this itinerary would be impossible for independent travellers.

Utility is the key to understanding Palladio’s villas. In sixteenth-century Italy a villa was a farm, and in the Veneto agriculture had become a serious business for the city-based mercantile aristocracy. As the Venetian maritime empire gradually crumbled before the advancing Ottoman Turks, Venetians compensated by investing in the terra ferma of their hinterland.

But beauty was equally the determinant of form, though beauty of a special kind.

Palladio was designing buildings for a clientele who, whether princes of commerce, traditional soldier-aristocrats or gentlemen of leisure, shared an intense admiration for ancient Rome. They were children of the M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L

High Renaissance and steeped in humanist learning. Palladio was the first architect regularly to apply the colonnaded temple fronts to secular buildings.

But the beauty of his villas was not solely a matter of applied ornament. As can be seen particularly in his low-budget, pared-down villas and auxiliary buildings there is a geometric order which arises from sophisticated systems of proportion and an unerring intuitive sense of design. It is little wonder that Andrea Palladio became the most influential architect the western world has ever known.

Most of his finest surviving villas and palaces are included, as well as some of the lesser-known and less accessible ones.

Itinerary

Day 1. Fly at c. 2.15pm from London Gatwick to Venice. Drive to the hotel Campo Marzio in Vicenza where all five nights are spent.

Day 2. See in Vicenza several palaces by Palladio including the Palazzo Thiene and the colonnaded Palazzo Chiericati. His chief civic works here are the Basilica, the mediaeval town hall nobly encased in classical guise, and the Teatro Olimpico, the earliest theatre of modern times. The hilltop ‘La Rotonda’, a ten-minute drive away, is 10

the most famous of Palladio’s buildings, domed and with four porticoes. Adjacent is the 17th-century Villa Valmarana ‘ai Nani’ with frescoes by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo.

Day 3. The Villa Pisani at Bagnolo di Lonigo, small but of majestic proportions, is considered by many scholars to be Palladio’s first masterpiece. The Villa Badoer at Fratta Polesine, from the middle of his career, is a perfect example of Palladian hierarchy, a raised residence connected by curved colonnades to auxiliary buildings.

Day 4. In the foothills of the Dolomites, Villa Godi Malinverni is an austere cuboid design with lavish frescoes inside, and at the lovely town of Bassano there is a wooden bridge by Palladio. The Villa Barbaro at Maser, built by Palladio for two highly cultivated Venetian brothers, has superb frescoes by Veronese, while the Villa Emo at Fanzolo typically and beautifully combines the utilitarian with the monumental.

Day 5. Drive along a stretch of the canal between Padua and the Venetian Lagoon which is lined with the summer retreats of Venetian patricians. The Villa Foscari, ‘La Malcontenta’, is one of Palladio’s best known and most enchanting creations.

Explore one of Palladio’s most evolved, Te l e p h o n e 0 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5

Pre-festival tours

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

The Veneto Some of Italy’s finest art & architecture most beautiful and influential buildings, the Villa Cornaro at Piombino Dese.

Day 6. The Villa Pojana, an early work, is restrained but of noble proportions and contains models of Palladio’s works. The Villa Cordellina Lombardi is a fine example of 18th-century Palladianism. Return to Vicenza. Those not staying on in the Campo Marzio transfer to their chosen festival hotel.

Final day of the festival, 28th June. Fly from Venice, arriving Gatwick at c. 5.45pm.

Please note that most of the villas are privately owned and require special permission to visit.

The selection and order of visits may therefore vary a little from the description here.

Practicalities

Price: £1,840 (deposit £200). This includes: flights (Euro Traveller) with British Airways (Boeing 737); travel by private coach; accommodation as described below; breakfasts, two lunches and three dinners with wine, water, coffee; all admissions; tips for waiters and drivers; all taxes; the services of the lecturer. Single supplement £220 (double room for single occupancy). Price without flights £1,720.

Please tick to arrive in your festival hotel on the 22 June on the booking form (see page 9 for prices), unless you are making your own arrangements for the night of the 22–23 June.

Hotel. The Campo Marzio is a 4-star hotel just outside a city gate of Vicenza, well located and comfortable. A fairly undistinguished exterior screens attractively furnished, air-conditioned bedrooms of a good size. For more details, please see the hotel descriptions on page 9.

There is a choice of four hotels for the festival following this tour, and you will transfer to whichever you select on the booking form at the end of the tour (unless you are staying on at the Campo Marzio).

How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking as the coach can rarely get close to the villas or enter town centres. Average distance by coach per day: 66 miles Small group: 10–22 participants. info@martinrandall.co.uk

14–21 June 2014 (ma 935) 8 days • £2,560 Lecturer: Dr Michael Douglas-Scott Art and architecture in places major and minor, Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso and elsewhere.

Mediaeval frescoes (Giotto), Renaissance paintings (Titian), 18th-century interiors (Tiepolo), Neo-Classical sculpture (Canova).

Romanesque churches, Gothic castles, Palladian villas.

For centuries the Veneto compromised the heartland of Venice’s terra ferma empire, stretching from the Adriatic to Lake Garda, and from the plain of the Po to the foothills of the Dolomites.

But the Veneto is no mere subordinate appendage to La Serenissima, culturally or politically. The region is too large and varied for such relegation, and has a history which is far longer than that of the upstart maritime republic.

The towns and cities on this tour are among the most illustrious and arthistorically important places in Italy, as well as being some of the most attractive. Most have Roman or pre-Roman origins; at many the mediaeval circuit of walls is still intact.

In the fields of painting and sculpture the Trecento (fourteenth century) is particularly well represented, with Giotto’s finest fresco cycle heading the list. From the fifteenth century are masterpieces by Pisanello, Donatello, Mantegna and Bellini; great paintings by Titian, Giorgione and Veronese show the High Renaissance to advantage, and the eighteenth century is represented by Tiepolo, the consummate master of the age.

Architecture ranges from Roman through Romanesque to Gothic, and on to Renaissance and Neo-Classical. There are some great buildings here, but the appeal of the tour lies as much in the vernacular and the streetscape as in monumental set pieces.

A recurring theme is the genius of Andrea Palladio. To this one man is owed the appearance of most of the villas in the countryside, and indeed of much of eighteenth-century England, for he became 11

Vicenza, steel engraving c. 1840.

the most internationally influential of all Italian architects. Work by another Italian architect also makes repeated appearances: Carlo Scarpa created some of the most affecting designs of the twentieth century, blending old with new.

Itinerary

Day 1: Castelfranco Veneto. Fly at c.

9.15am from London Heathrow to Venice and drive to the delightful little walled town of Castelfranco. The cathedral has Giorgione’s wonderful Madonna Enthroned and a museum in his house next door. Continue to Vicenza, where all seven nights are spent.

Day 2: Vicenza. The beautiful little city of Vicenza is architecturally the noblest and most homogenous in northern Italy, much of the fabric consisting of Renaissance palaces. Andrea Palladio spent most of his life there, and his buildings include the town hall (‘Basilica’), an epoch-making theatre (Teatro Olimpico) and several aristocratic residences, one of which, the Palazzo Chiericati, houses an excellent art gallery. A number of restoration campaigns are coming to an end and there is more to see than ever before.

Day 3: Verona. A major Roman settlement,

B o o k o n l i n e a t w w w. m a r t i n r a n d a l l . c o m

Pre-festival tours The Veneto continued

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014 Asolo, wood engraving from The Magazine of Art 1887.

Practicalities

Price: £2,560 (deposit £250). This includes: air travel (Euro Traveller) on British Airways flights (Airbus 319); private coach throughout; accommodation for the duration of the tour as described below; breakfasts and four dinners with wine, water, coffee; all admissions; all tips for waiters, drivers, guides; all taxes; the services of the lecturer. Single supplement £120 (double room for single occupancy). Price without flights £2,240.

Additional nights. If you would like to stay on in the Hotel Palladio from Saturday 21–Monday 23 June (2 nights), please let us know on the festival booking form.

Price per person for two nights in a double room: £145; in a double room for single occupancy: £190.

Verona flourished also in the Middle Ages under the tyrannical rule of the Scaligeri dynasty. A sequence of interconnecting squares lie at the heart of the city, lined with magnificent mediaeval palazzi. The vast Gothic church of Sant’Anastasia has a fresco by Pisanello and San Zeno is a splendid Romanesque church with an altarpiece by Mantegna. The elegant redbrick castle contains a very fine art gallery.

Day 4: San Vito, Asolo, Possagno. The Brion cemetery complex at San Vito by Carlo Scarpa is 20th-cent. architecture at its most beautiful and moving. There is a lunch break at Asolo, a lovely hilltop town with a Lorenzo Lotto altarpiece in the cathedral.

Possagno was birthplace of the leading Neo-Classical sculptor Antonio Canova and he rebuilt the church as his memorial, a cross between the Pantheon and Parthenon.

Full-scale models for many of his sculptures have been assembled in a museum.

Day 5: Padua. Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel is one of the greatest achievements in the history of art and marks the beginning of the modern era in painting. Further outstanding 14th-cent. fresco cycles are by Giusto de’ Menabuoi in the Baptistry and by Altichieri in the vast multi-domed Basilica of St Anthony. The Renaissance is represented by Donatello’s altar panels here and the bronze equestrian statue outside, the Gattamelata. The mediaeval town hall and surrounding M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L

squares are among the finest of such ensembles in Italy.

Day 6: Vicenza, Vicentine villas. There is free time in Vicenza in the morning. The afternoon excursion is to places just outside the city: ‘La Rotonda’, the most famous of all Palladian villas, and the adjacent Villa Valmarana ‘ai Nani’, with superb frescoes by the Gian Battista Tiepolo and his son.

Day 7: Treviso. Once an important fortress city, Treviso has a fine historic centre with imposing public buildings and many painted façades. The cathedral has a Titian Annunciation, but the hero of the day is the 14th-cent. painter Tommaso da Modena: his frescoes of learned monks in the chapter house of St Nicholas are extraordinary, as is the St Ursula cycle in the church of Sta Caterina.

Hotel. All seven nights (or nine if you choose the additional nights) are spent in Vicenza at the Hotel Palladio, a small establishment in the centre of Vicenza, opened in 2008. It occupies a historic building but the décor is contemporary.

For more details, please see the hotel descriptions on page 9.

Please note that there is a choice of four hotels for the festival following this tour, and that you will transfer to whichever you select on the booking form on Day 1 of the festival, 23rd June (unless you choose to stay on at the Hotel Palladio).

How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking as the coach can rarely enter town centres. There are also some visits reached by crossing uneven ground or up some steep hills. Average distance by coach per day: 52 miles Small group: 10–22 participants.

Day 8: Stra. The 18th-century Villa Pisani at Stra, perhaps the grandest in Italy, has a ceiling fresco by Tiepolo in the ballroom and well maintained gardens. Return to Vicenza. From this point until the beginning of the festival no lecturer or tour manager accompanies the group, but festival staff start to arrive in Vicenza from the day after this, 22nd June.

22nd & 23rd June. Time is free in the lovely town of Vicenza.

Final day of the festival, 28th June. Fly from Venice on flight BA 579, arriving Heathrow at c. 2.45pm.

12

Te l e p h o n e 0 2 0 8 7 4 2 3 3 5 5

Booking form

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

Music in the Veneto Monteverdi • Vivaldi • Palladio

23–28 June 2014

TRAVELLERS’ NAMES. Give your name(s) as you would like it/ them to appear on documents issued to other participants.

1.

2.

ADDRESS for correspondence.

Telephone (home) Mobile Fax Postcode

E-mail

FESTIVAL HOTEL & ROOM TYPE (page 9). Please tick your chosen room-type within the hotel you would like to stay in.

SINGLE OCCUPANCY ROOMS

Single room

Double room for single occupancy

Superior double room for single occupancy

Hotel Palladio

-

-

G Boutique Hotel

-

-

Arrive a day early (22 June)

-

Campo Marzio Villa Michelangelo

ROOMS FOR TWO SHARING

Double

Superior double

Superior twin

Hotel Palladio

-

-

G Boutique Hotel

-

-

-

-

Campo Marzio

Twin

-

-

Villa Michelangelo

PRE-FESTIVAL TOURS. Tick to book.

Palladian Villas, 17–22 June 2014 (ma 936) – see page 10.

Junior suite (double)

Junior suite (twin)

-

-

-

-

Suite (double)

Suite (twin)

-

-

-

-

Arrive a day early (22 June)

FESTIVAL FLIGHTS (page 8). Please tick, unless you are taking a pre-festival tour.

Please also tick here if you require accommodation in your festival hotel on the night of the 22 June:

Option 1. Gatwick to Venice, flying out a day early.

The Veneto, 14–21 June 2014 (ma 935) – see pages 11–12.

Option 3. Heathrow to Bologna, flying out on the first day of the

Please also tick here if you require accommodation in the tour hotel on the nights of the 22 and 23 June: Room-type: Flights:

Single Group flights

Twin

Double

No flights (own arrangements)

Option 2. Gatwick to Verona, flying out a day early. festival (£50 supplement).

Option 4 (no flights).

If you are making your own flight arrangements, you are welcome to join a transfer that coincides with one of our festival flights, free of charge. We are also offering additional transfers, at a supplement of £40 per person – see page 8 for details.

Booking form

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014

SPECIAL REQUESTS including dietary needs, and ‘no flights’ transfers (if known at this stage – see page 8):

PASSPORT DETAILS. In block capitals please. Essential for airlines and in case of emergency during the festival: Traveller 1

Traveller 2

Title

Title

Surname

Surname

Forename(s)

Forename(s)

Date of birth (dd/mm/yy)

Date of birth (dd/mm/yy)

Passport number

Passport number

Place of birth

Place of birth

Place of issue

Place of issue

Nationality

Nationality

Relation to you

Date of issue (dd/mm/yy)

Date of issue (dd/mm/yy)

Telephone

Date of expiry (dd/mm/yy)

Date of expiry (dd/mm/yy)

NEXT OF KIN or contact in case of emergency.

Name

PAYMENT EITHER Deposit(s) at £300 per person for the festival, or £200/ £250 per person if you are also taking a pre-festival tour: Total:

£

OR Full payment which is required within ten weeks of departure: Total:

£

EITHER by cheque. Please make cheques payable to Martin Randall Travel Ltd and write the festival code (ma 951) on the back.

OR by credit or debit card. Visa/ Mastercard/ Amex

OR by bank transfer. Please use your surname and the festival code (ma 951) as a reference and please allow for all bank charges. Tick if you have paid by bank transfer: Account name: Martin Randall Travel Ltd. Royal Bank of Scotland, Drummonds, 49 Charing Cross, London SW1A 2DX. Account number: 0019 6050. Sort code: 16-00-38 IBAN: GB71 RBOS 1600 3800 1960 50.

Swift/BIC: RBOS GB2L I have read and agree to the Booking Conditions on behalf of all listed on this form.

Signed

Card number Start date

Expiry date

M ARTIN RANDALL T R AV E L ABTA No.Y6050

5085

Date

Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London, UK, W4 4GF Telephone 020 8742 3355 Fax 020 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk

www.martinrandall.com

Australia: telephone 1300 55 95 95 New Zealand: telephone 0800 877 622 anz@martinrandall.com.au Canada: telephone 647 382 1644 canada@martinrandall.ca USA: telephone 1 800 988 6168

Booking details

Making a Booking 1. Provisional booking

We recommend that you contact us first to ascertain that your preferred hotel and room type is still available. Then you can make a provisional booking which we will hold for one week (longer if necessary) pending receipt of your completed booking form and deposit.

2. Definite booking

Fill in the booking form and send it to us with the deposit (£300 for the festival; more if taking a pre-festival tour). It is important that you read the Booking Conditions at this stage, and that you sign the booking form. Full payment is required if you are booking within ten weeks of the festival.

3. Our confirmation

Upon receipt of your booking form and deposit we shall send you confirmation of your booking. After this your deposit is nonreturnable except in the special circumstances mentioned in the Booking Conditions.

Further details of the festival will also be sent at this stage.

Booking Conditions Please read these

You need to sign your assent to these booking conditions on the booking form.

Our promises to you

We aim to be fair, reasonable and sympathetic in all our dealings with clients, and to act always with integrity.

We will meet all our legal and regulatory responsibilities, often going beyond the minimum obligations.

We aim to provide full and accurate information about our tours and festivals. If there are changes, we will tell you promptly.

If something does go wrong, we will try to put it right. Our overriding aim is to ensure that every client is satisfied with our services.

All we ask of you

We ask that you read the information we send to you.

Specific terms

Our contract with you. From the time we receive your signed booking form and initial payment, a contract exists between you and Martin Randall Travel Ltd. Eligibility. We reserve the right to refuse to accept a booking without necessarily giving a reason. It is essential to be able to cope with the walking and stair-climbing required to

Music in the Veneto, 23–28 June 2014 get to the concert venues. See ‘Fitness for the festival’. If for any stage, including the airport, you would like the use of a wheelchair, then this festival is unlikely to be suitable for you.

While there is no age limit on the festival, unfortunately we do not accept bookings on the pre-festival tours from anyone who would be aged 81 or over.

Insurance. It is a requirement of booking that you have adequate holiday insurance.

Cover for medical treatment, repatriation, loss of property and cancellation charges must be included. Insurance can be obtained from most insurance companies, banks, travel agencies and (in the UK) many retail outlets including Post Offices.

Passports and visas. Participants must have passports, valid for at least six months beyond the date of the festival. No visas are required for Italy for UK or other EU citizens, or for citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Nationals of other countries should ascertain whether visas are required in their case, and obtain them if they are.

If you cancel. If you have to cancel your participation in the festival or pre-festival tour, there would be a charge which varies according to the period of notice you give. Up to 57 days before departure the deposit only is forfeited. Thereafter a percentage of the total cost will be due: between 56 and 29 days: between 28 and 15 days: between 14 and 3 days (inclusive): within 48 hours:

40% 60% 80% 100%

We take as the day of cancellation that on which we receive written confirmation of cancellation.

If we cancel the festival or tour. We might decide to cancel the festival or tour if at any time up to eight weeks before there were insufficient bookings for it to be viable. We would refund everything you had paid to us. We might also cancel if hostilities, civil unrest, natural disaster or other circumstances amounting to force majeure affect the region.

Safety and security. If the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against travel to places visited on the festival or tour, we would cancel or adjust the itinerary to avoid the risky area. In the event of cancellation before the festival or tour commenced we would give you a full refund.

Financial protection. We provide full financial protection for our package holidays, by way of our Air Travel Organiser’s Licence number 3622. When you buy an ATOL protected flight inclusive holiday from us you receive an ATOL Certificate. This lists what is financially protected, where you can get information on what this means for you and who to contact

if things go wrong. We will provide you with the services listed on the ATOL Certificate (or a suitable alternative). In some cases, where we aren’t able do so for reasons of insolvency, an alternative ATOL holder may provide you with the services you have bought or a suitable alternative (at no extra cost to you). You agree to accept that in those circumstances the alternative ATOL holder will perform those obligations and you agree to pay any money outstanding to be paid by you under your contract to that alternative ATOL holder.

However, you also agree that in some cases it will not be possible to appoint an alternative ATOL holder, in which case you will be entitled to make a claim under the ATOL scheme (or your credit card issuer where applicable). If we, or the suppliers identified on your ATOL certificate, are unable to provide the services listed (or a suitable alternative, through an alternative ATOL holder or otherwise) for reasons of insolvency, the Trustees of the Air Travel Trust may make a payment to (or confer a benefit on) you under the ATOL scheme. You agree that in return for such a payment or benefit you assign absolutely to those Trustees any claims which you have or may have arising out of or relating to the non-provision of the services, including any claim against us (or your credit card issuer where applicable). You also agree that any such claims maybe re-assigned to another body, if that other body has paid sums you have claimed under the ATOL scheme.

We provide full financial protection for our package holidays that do not include a flight, by way of a bond held by ABTA The Trade Association.

The limits of our liabilities. As principal, we accept responsibility for all ingredients of the festival and pre-festival tours, except those in which the principle of force majeure prevails.

Our obligations and responsibilities are also limited where international conventions apply in respect of air, sea or rail carriers, including the Warsaw Convention and its various updates.

If we make changes. Circumstances might arise which prevent us from operating the festival exactly as advertised. We would try to devise a satisfactory alternative, but if the change represents a significant loss to the festival we would offer compensation. If you decide to cancel because the alternative we offer is not acceptable we would give a full refund.

English Law. These conditions form part of your contract with Martin Randall Travel Ltd and are governed by English law. All proceedings shall be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

M A RT I N R A N D A L L T R AV E L A RT • A R C H I T E C T U R E • G A S T R O N O M Y • A R C H A E O L O G Y • H I S T O R Y • M U S I C • L I T E R AT U R E

Floorplan of the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, mid-18th-century engraving.

Voysey House, Barley Mow Passage, London, W4 4GF Telephone 020 8742 3355 Fax 020 8742 7766 info@martinrandall.co.uk Australia: Martin Randall Marketing, PO Box 537, Toowong, QLD 4066 Telephone 1300 55 95 95 Fax 07 3377 0142 anz@martinrandall.com.au New Zealand: Telephone 0800 877 622 Canada: Telephone 647 382 1644 Fax 416 925 2670 canada@martinrandall.ca USA: Telephone 1 800 988 6168

ABTA No.Y6050

5085

www.martinrandall.com