Information

GENERAL PLANNING

The character of the Festival
Festival Homenaje offers the opportunity to participate to an intensive “campus” dedicated to the classical guitar. A week rich of events focused on the guitar (concerts, masterclasses, conferences), through the involvement of very high-quality musicians, the beauty of the venues as well as the creation of a particular environment of conviviality will contribute all together to creating a special occasion to celebrate the past, the present and the future of the classical guitar. The members will have the opportunity to get to know, hear, watch and compare different experiences and ways of playing and teaching the guitar.

For these reasons, registration procedures have been designed to provide favourable conditions for a full participation during the whole duration of the Festival: we strongly encourage to do so, as this is the most productive and interesting way to get involved.

LOCATIONS

The Festival will take place from 6^th to 14^th September 2025 in Padua, a beautiful historical town near Venice (Italy), rich in art, history and culture (in 202, Padua’s fourteenth-century fresco cycles were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List). The venues of all the events are located in the monumental city centre, very close to each other. 

- The recital by David Russell (Saturday 6^th) will take place at Scuola della Carità (via S. Francesco, 61, Padova) (map)

- The remaining 3 concerts, all conferences and all masterclasses programmed will take place at Barco Teatro (via Orto botanico, 12) (map).

Scuola della Carità

SCUOLA DELLA CARITA'

In 1419 the Scuola was established in the immediate vicinity of Padua’s most important hospital – San Francesco Grande – whilst work continued on completing the construction of that hospital itself and the nearby church and Monastery dell’Osservanza. That work was financed by the rich couple of Baldo Bonafari da Piombino and Sibilla de Cetto, who lived in the house opposite the Hospital, where later the present Scuola itself would be installed. In converting the building for use by the Confraternity, new windows were opened up and a splendid coffer-beam ceiling was installed. The walls of the chamber were also decorated with frescoes of the main scenes from the Life of the Virgin.

Previously, those walls had been decorated by an unknown artist who had painted a total of fifteen panels, which were restored in 1530 by Giovanni Dal Santo; traces of the old painted decoration can be seen in the decorative band beneath the portraits of Bonafari and his wife. Then, in 1579, they were decorated with frescoes by Dario Varatori, father of the artist who became known as ‘Il Padovanino’. These sixteenth-century Scenes from the Life of the Virgin are the last great cycle of frescoes painted in Padua. There are a total of twelve scenes, with a thirteenth panel depicting Baldo Bonafari and Sibilla de Cetto.

The Scuola della Carità hosts for the first time the opening concert played by David Russell in this fifth edition of the Festival.

BARCO TEATRO

Barco Teatro has been founded at the end of 2018 in Padua in the renovated “barchessa” of Villa Tron (a seventeenth-century complex located between the Botanical Garden, the Basilica of S. Antonio and Prato della Valle) with the ambition of proposing a varied and diversified cultural itinerary mainly on classical music and figurative art. It is a space with a capacity of 100 seats with a stage of ideal dimensions to host classical music concerts of both soloist and chamber ensembles.

The equipped walls of the room are dedicated to host figurative art exhibitions that perfectly interact with the performances on the stage: this way, Barco Teatro becomes a multidisciplinary - often synchronic - container of different artistic expressions, offering the viewer a decidedly new and original experience in the context of the city.

The acoustics, designed by a sound engineer, the technical equipment and the particular size and conformity of the space put artists and audience in a particular continuity and make Barco Teatro ideal for an engaging participation in music.

Barco Teatro is the organizational headquarters and the administrative office of the Festival and it will host 3 concerts, all the conferences and masterclasses and, last but not least, all the end-of-concert dinners, reserved for enrolled students: these are convivial occasions that have been much appreciated by both students and musicians participating in the previous editions.