17-22 March The Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LMTA) will host the “Early Music Week 2025”, which aims to promote the music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and will bring together students from 10 European schools of music and art to create an opera-ballet “Les Elements” in Vilnius. 
A team of the most prominent foreign and Lithuanian early music professionals has been assembled especially for this project: tenor Dominique Vellard (France), who has been awarded the French Legion of Honour for his services to early music, artistic director of the Gilles Binchois ensemble, tenor Dominique Vellard (France), Fabio Bonizzoni (Italy), one of the greatest Italian harpsichordists and organist of his generation, who has won the highest awards of the Gramophone Awards, and Dr. Elizabeth Svarstad (Norway), baroque violinist Judyta Tupczyńska (Poland) and artistic director and baroque singer Dr. Rūta Vox (Vosyliūtė) (Lithuania).
“On 21 March – Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday – the Day of Early Music is celebrated all over Europe, and the LMTA Early Music Week will celebrate this occasion in Lithuania with a joint project of students from ten European music schools (Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Germany, Norway, Poland, Latvia, Estonia) – the aforementioned opera-ballet “Les Elements”. This is an extraordinary opportunity for Lithuanian students to gain experience from more experienced colleagues and at the same time deepen their understanding of early music and its performance. Early Music Day is celebrated together with the European Early Music Network REMA,” says Beatričė Baltrušaitytė, one of the initiators of the Early Music Week project and the project coordinator.
The programme of events of the LAMT’s Early Music Week will include educational events, such as the dance evening “Baroque Vibes, Disco Moves”, during which Edmundas Žička, a historical dance professional, will introduce the dances of the European court of the Baroque period, i.e. the counter-dances. To extend the dance evening and move to the rhythm of disco, composers Domantas Pūras and Ignas Šoliūnas will be invited to dance to the rhythm of electronic music, playing the most famous Baroque themes at the DJ console.
The participants of the project “Early Music Week 2025” are organising an exclusive early music event, where they will invite you to listen to the works of Renaissance and Baroque composers and to get acquainted with historical musical instruments in the corridors of the LAMT’s II Palace (Vilniaus str.6-2).
In cooperation with the French Institute in Lithuania, the Vilnius Academy of Arts, the Palace of the Grand Dukes Museum and the 11th International Marco Schacchi Early Music Festival, the activities of the LAMT’s Early Music Week will culminate in a series of events for the participants, L’Air, the international baroque orchestra, will be celebrated with the final event – the opera-ballet Les élémens (The Verses, 1721) by French composers André Cardinal Destouches and Michel-Richard Delalande. In the Grand Renaissance Menorah of the Palace of the Grand Ducal Palace.
The opera-ballet was first performed on 31 December 1721 at the Tuileries Palace, Paris, with King Louis XV himself dancing. Later, in 1725, the work was presented to the general public at the Palais-Royal theatre in Paris and remained popular for many years. According to musicologists, this work is highly symbolic in the history of French Baroque music: it is Louis XV’s last appearance on stage, M.R. Delalande’s last work for the stage and the last opera-ballet to be performed in a French palace, which was later transferred to public theatres.
“This is the first performance of this opera-ballet in Lithuania. Since the opportunity to perform Baroque operas for LAMT students came in 2020, along with the creation of a new specialization in the singing department, it is also a challenge to select and adapt Baroque operas for our students every year. This opera impressed with its melodiousness, its refined 18th century French style, its dances, and also with the composition of the singers, the tessitura of the voices and the number of characters. Preparing for the production of such an opera is a long and difficult process. First of all, it was necessary to study the manuscript of the opera, then to rewrite it and adapt it to the performers. To perform an early 18th century French opera-ballet, to touch such a genre and to realise the Baroque singing, Baroque dancing, gestures taught in the studios, and to perform all this with the orchestra of the students of the European early music departments, which has been formed especially for this event – this is not only an exceptional opportunity for the students of the LMTA, but also a dream! Meanwhile, for opera lovers, it is a great opportunity to see and hear the rarely performed genre of French opera-ballet,” says Dr. Rūta Vox (Vosyliūtė), the initiator of the opera-ballet Stichia and a lecturer of Baroque opera at the LMTA.
“This is the second year that the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre is organising the Early Music Week in cooperation with the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, the International Marco Schacchi Early Music Festival, the French Institute in Lithuania, the Gilles Binchois Association, Erasmus+, the Vilnius Academy of Arts and the European Music Schools.
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