Vatican Museums

From Friday 7 September to Friday 26 October – announces Professor Paolucci, Director of the Vatican Museums - the evening and night openings of the Pope's Museums will be enlivened by performances by the finest students of the State Musical Conservatory "Giuseppe Verdi" of Turin.

The titles of the performances already planned - "Saxophony: Balcony Quartet", "Dance and Music: masterpieces of the 1900s", "Music for strings at the Sabaudian Court", "Violin and Piano", "Clarinet and Piano" suggest to us the exquisite elegance of the project and the great professionalism that underpins the musical formation of the students of the Conservatory of Turin. It will be exciting for these young musical talents to perform alongside the works of Michelangelo and Raphael, next to the "Laocoonte" and the "Apollo of the Belvedere". It will be a unique and unforgettable experience for guests at the Friday openings of the Museum to witness an encounter between the great arts (Music, Painting, Sculpture), entrusted to the passion and enthusiasm of the students of the Conservatory of Turin.

The fruitful union between Art and Music is reconfirmed in September and October on the occasion of another 8 unmissable concerts on the special evening openings on Friday 7, 14, 21 and 28 September and 5, 12, 19 and 26 October, at 09.00 p.m.
During the concerts of the "Music at the Vatican Museums" series, the pontificial galleries will become the ideal setting for a wonderful alliance between the figurative arts and music, as God - explains Professor Paolucci - has given us music, balsam for the soul; Raphael knew this well. And indeed, "numine afflatur" (inspired by divinity) is written in the "Parnassus" painted in the rooms of Julius II, where Apollo is depicted playing the zither surrounded by the Muses.

"Music at the Vatican Museums" is a cultural project curated by the Events Office of the Vatican Museums with the valuable musical and musicological guidance of Professor Ala Botti Caselli.

Faithful to their educational and formative mission, during this series of concerts the pontificial galleries will present to the public one of their most stimulating identities: that of "Cultural Laboratory". The museum space therefore becomes a "living" and "pulsating" space where different artistic languages and protagonists can converge and engage in dialogue in a spirit of exchange, experimentation and growth. After the successful experience with the Conservatory of Frosinone, it is now the turn of the Conservatory of Turin which, for eight concerts, will generously lend its musical excellence to the Vatican Museums. The Pope's Museums will in turn offer to Conservatory and its students not only a public and an exclusive "theatre", but above all a unique formative experience.

Indeed, competent Vatican art historians will accompany the conservatory students participating in the project, along with their teachers and assistants, on a detailed visit of those treasures and historical locations selected for their particular relevance both to the evening's musical programme and to their cultural formation. Che c'è di Bello? It is to be able to live and share beauty, in all its forms and expressions - declares Maria Luisa Pacciani, Turin conservatory director - a powerful and meaningful cultural, emotive and formative experience for our students, and a prestigious institutional collaboration in which we are honoured to participate!