From Autumn 2025 to Spring 2026, the Ensemble Baroque de Nice offers a new season focused on emotions and nature. Eight concerts, each dedicated to a human passion, will invite the public on a journey between art, science, and humanity.
Each season, the Ensemble Baroque de Nice imagines a new guiding theme to connect its concerts. This year, the choice was nature. Not the nature of landscapes, but that of human beings and their emotions. The cycle began earlier this month with the next date on October 17, 2025 at the Saint-François-de-Paule church with a performance of “Anger”, illustrated by Handel and Vivaldi. It will conclude on May 22, 2026 with “Hope”, a program where Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Handel will blend sleep, faith, and rebirth.
Between these two dates, the musicians will present Joy, Desire, Surprise, Love, Contemplation, and Gratitude. Each of these stages will offer a perspective on a facet of the human heart through works by Bach, Corelli, Mozart, or Bartók. These concerts will mainly be held at Saint-Martin – Saint-Augustin Church, with some events at Saint-François-de-Paule and Le Gesù, familiar venues for the Nice audience.
Under the direction of Gilbert Bezzina, founder of the Ensemble, this program combines music and introspection. The relationship between man and nature serves as a common thread: winds, waves, or the heart’s movements become as many musical metaphors. Baroque music, capable of imitating these natural rhythms, regains its primary function: to convey passions.
A Dialogue Between Art and Science
The season will be enriched with a special event: “Baroque Storms”, organized in partnership with the CNRS, the city of Nice, and IFREMER. This day of conferences and music will bring together musicologists, geologists, and meteorologists at the Palais de l’Agriculture. Together, they will share their knowledge on the theme of storms, both natural and internal.
The event will conclude with a concert at the Nice Cathedral, with free admission. Telemann’s Water Music will be a central theme for the evening, punctuated by storm airs performed by soprano Heather Newhouse. This dialogue between disciplines seeks to show how music captures the power of the elements and human upheavals.
“As every year, it is fitting to find a theme for our concert season. It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that nature, particularly the sea, is now at the heart of concerns in Nice […] This new season of the Ensemble Baroque de Nice will thus be an opportunity to explore different passions of the soul and their musical representations through works of both well-known and unknown masters from the 17th and 18th centuries, performed for you by the young soloists of the Ensemble Baroque de Nice,” says Gilbert Bezzina, the historical director of Ensemble Baroque de Nice.
A Season Between Youth and Transmission
The programming relies on a new generation of soloists from the Ensemble: violinists, harpsichordists, flutists, and singers will alternate throughout the months. Chamber music recitals will punctuate the season:
- November 8, 2025, Hélène Coloigner (violin) and Charlotte Morck (harpsichord)
- February 7, 2026, Federica Basilica (violin and viola da gamba)
- March 7, 2026, Michel Quagliozzi (flute)
- April 4, 2026, Gilbert Bezzina (violin) and Sergio Basilica (theorbo)
- May 16, 2026, Stéphanie Varnerin (soprano) and Mathilde Mugot (harpsichord)
These more intimate moments will allow the audience to hear artists in dialogue, in a repertoire often unknown but essential to the Baroque tradition. The Ensemble chooses proximity and continuity: transmitting a heritage while making room for the creativity of young performers.
In a changing cultural context, this season plots a sober and coherent path. It connects human emotions to natural forces, scientific knowledge to artistic practice. Between anger and hope, sea, and heart, it offers a sensitive journey through the world.
