Editorial by the President
A Sacred World!
Our 2025 theme deliberately puzzles the mind!
The programme brings together sacred music, “at home” in the church of Valloire, with music that celebrates our world, its earth, water, air and human life, by essence all sacred.
Vincenzo Coronelli, a Venetian Franciscan monk, was “the” cartographer and cosmographer in the 17th century. He created these two imposing spheres each 4 metres in diameter and each weighing 2 tonnes, a gift to Louis XIV in 1683, now on display at the François Mitterrand Library.
An inexhaustible object of admiration and dreams and a symbol of the Sacred World, the celestial vault, with its constellations, adorns the poster of this year’s festival.
Gaël de Kerret’s editorial highlights the beauty of the 2025 programme. For my part, I would like to expand on our “Cultural Bridges”. Premiered in 2022, they combine Baroque music and contemporary artistic expression, with a view to enable audiences who are not familiar with classical music, or who shy at anything Baroque, to discover this repertoire in conjunction with a more easily accessible art form.
In these so-called “Bridges”, Baroque music and contemporary aesthetics find an authentic expression, each at the peak of its art, yet fused into a singular work. Last year, Mathilde Horcholle’s Toccata e Fuga ensemble teamed up with two acrobats to create Corpus fantasticus, an amazing composition of poetry, humour and beauty, later performed at other venues. We are therefore delighted to invite Toccata e Fuga back for a new 2025 creation entitled Sacrebleu! a show which combines Hip-Hop dance, Krump for the insiders, and the music of Bach.
It remains for me to thank all those who make the festival such a success: artists, festival-goers, sponsors, partners, elected officials who vote for our funding, with the Commune de Valloire in the lead, clergy, volunteers, association leaders, hoteliers, accommodation providers … whose contribution is just as essential.
Dominique Longchamp
President of Amis du Festival Valloire baroque – Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres
Dominique Longchamp
In 2009, Dominique Longchamp brought together the founding team of the Festival Valloire baroque, a project whose main lines he had devised.The team, about twenty persons, either native of Valloire or “adopted”, rapidly evolved into an organizing team, managed, year after year, since the first season of the festival in 2010, by the initiator of the project. Today, strengthened by the cohesion and harmony of their team, the organizers are increasingly skilled in the tricks of their “trade”. They are proud to receive messages of encouragement, such as that of a Savoyard politician :“I congratulate you for the quality of the work you have achieved to promote this wonderful event that does honour to the cultural programme of the Maurienne valley." Dominique Longchamp is Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
