Intonazione

Music Festival at Santa Caterina, Rio nell’ Elba, Elba Island, Italy

An aura of highly charged spirituality pervades Santa Caterina, an ancient monastery perched on the slopes of Monte Serra, where stone rubs on stone. Built upon an ancient temple, it has been a place of pilgrimage since the miraculous appearance of Saint Catherine in 1624. Named for the patron saint of philosophers and intellectuals, Santa Caterina is a place of creative artistry and scholarship, a magical spot that has been charged with mystic energy for thousands of years.

In the summer of 2010, this force field became the venue for the first season of the music festival Intonazione, which features performances of early music at sites that have been predestined for such use for centuries. The festival is also a venue for contemporary music that has been especially composed for its performance here (2010: Gold.Berg.Werk by Karlheinz Essl). The third genre featured at Intonazione is jazz in the broadest sense of the word.

Another festival feature also met with great enthusiasm last year: the candlelight dinner of specialities from the Island of Elba enjoyed in this enchantingly magic place. This year again, chef Alvaro Claudi will prepare a feast for friends, sponsors and guests of the festival that will be served on elegantly set tables beneath a starry sky.

The finest moments of the Intonazione 2011 will also be documented on CD.

In the longer term, it is our goal to make Intonazione a fixed point in the cultural life of Tuscany by the year 2015. A further step in that direction are the eight concerts of the coming season, which offers an extraordinary variety of the finest artistry.