The Barockfest
The Barock-Fest at the Schwetzingen Palace Rokokotheater has been introducing audiences to rare Baroque operas for over fifteen years.
The festival is by now firmly established in the German cultural landscape, with performances having repeatedly been prized as the »rediscovery of the year« by media in the field. Each festival centres around a new production of one particular piece as well as offering high quality concerts in the rooms of the elector's summer residence, where famous guests such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Friedrich Schiller are known to have been received in the past.
While the first years were focused on works by Antonio Vivaldi, a range of Neapolitan operatic works enjoyed their cyclical rediscovery from 2011 onwards. Since 2019, artistic directors Ulrike Schumann and Thomas Böckstiegel have trained the spotlight of the Winter in Schwetzingen festival on the rediscovery of German Baroque composers.
The Barockfest 2024/25
The 18th edition of the popular festival is dedicated to two personalities who were central to the history of music, particularly in the region. On the one hand, the early Baroque composer Johann Sigismund Kusser (1660-1727), an unjustly forgotten artist, is the centre of attention: Jean-Baptiste Lully's pupil shaped musical life at the Stuttgart court as opera director and court conductor between 1699 and 1704. His diverse musical language set important accents at the turn of the 18th century by combining the French and German styles. Kusser's opera »Adonis« will be performed under the musical direction of early music specialist Jörg Halubek and thus joins the rediscovery of German baroque operas that have characterised the Baroque Festival since 2019. Winter in Schwetzingen also celebrates the 300th anniversary of the birth of Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz (1724-1799), under whose reign Mannheim and Schwetzingen rose to great cultural prominence beyond the borders of the state.
