Malta’s architectural heritage is central to the festival’s concept. There is continuous dialogue between the historic venues and the contemporary performances staged within them – be that via complementation, juxtaposition, or contrast.  This is what prompted the idea for the theme for this year’s Autumn edition of The Three Palaces festival.  I wanted to dig deeper and delve into the idea of conversation/s and interconnectedness in the interdisciplinary fashion that is my signature curatorial style, and that has now become so characteristic of our festival programme. I am therefore using the notion of dialogue and taking it further still.  There are conversations between artforms; discussions through counterpoint; dialogue between musicians; a tête-à-tête between movement and sound; discourse between architecture and style, stone and dance, history and today; exchanges between artists and public over a glass of wine; an interweaving of the senses – from scent to sound.  Painting becomes performance art, where sound and colours, music and imagery are brought to life on stage before an audience; octophonic parley takes place in a black box where the audience is enwrapped by the sound of forty voices, bells, polyphony, chant, boys’ voices; four hands become one on the piano... 

Everything is linked – albeit sometimes subliminally.  Exquisite arabesque cycles and grotesque painting in the Gran Salon at the Museum of Archaeology conjure up the idea of dance and movement in my head.  Restoration works revealing various layers of decorations from different times in history allowed me to span works from the Renaissance to modern times.  Living in the resplendence of St John’s Co-Cathedral is the epitome of light and darkness in artistic terms – the work of the genius that was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – his largest (and only) signed painting – The Beheading of St John, still in the place it was originally painted for, together with his striking St Jerome Writing.  This was the inspiration for the visual art exhibition Chiaroscuro in the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta – another conversation – that between darkness and light.  Linked to this, we have embraced an exhibition of immense international significance.

The majestic place that is Verdala Palace, built in 1586 by the architect Gerolamo Cassar – with its third floor added during the magistracy of Grand Master António Manuel de Vilhena (1722-1736) – will be the setting for a celebration of the gloriousness of the elaborate, ornate music of the Baroque era, culminating in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D major, BWV 1050, with its intricate, interweaving lines of conversation. The manuscript for the full set of concertos, listed then as “six concertos for several instruments” was completed in 1721, which aligns this perfectly with the venue. 

Throughout this extraordinary week of artistic conversation, each space has its own tale to tell.  Malta’s unique heritage is celebrated through the arts.  I hope that the programme brings an excitement for discovery, and a wish to continue the conversation beyond us closing doors!