At the heart of the Steri Monumental Complex, the Viridarium is transformed into a space where music and cinema converge, giving rise to a special preview of the Palermo Classica International Festival.
Between 4 and 20 July, ahead of the official start of the summer season, a mini-festival will take place, conceived as an artistic and symbolic prelude.
Four chamber concerts and a new project dedicated to silent cinema, Palermo Silent, will guide the audience into the Festival’s atmosphere, within an architectural setting that engages naturally with history.
As well as offering a foretaste of the main programme, this preview aims to provide a more intimate form of entertainment, in which the music draws closer to the audience and invites them to gradually enter the Festival’s world of sound.
The Viridarium thus becomes a garden of anticipation and inspiration, where the chamber music setting sets the stage for the energy of the major summer productions.
Alongside the mini-series of chamber concerts comes Palermo Silent, a programme dedicated to early cinema, in which the images are once again accompanied by the living breath of music rewritten for solo piano by R. Spinosa. The great masterpieces of silent cinema, from the expressionist visions of Murnau and Keaton to the cinematic architecture of Eisenstein, will be restored to their original form. The screen and the sound born from the musician’s performance in real time.
The Palermo Silent project is intended to be a film retrospective in which the piano and live instruments become the invisible narrators of the images. Music, as was the case in the early 20th century, guides the viewer’s gaze, amplifies emotions and restores cinema to its most fragile and poetic nature.
This programme thus serves as an ideal bridge between past and present: on the one hand, the tradition of live musical accompaniment in cinemas; on the other, the contemporary vision of the Palermo Classica Festival, which continues to explore new forms of dialogue between the arts.
In the evocative silence of the Viridarium, the festival preview becomes an invitation to slow down, listen and let oneself be guided towards the start of a new musical season.
Opening concert of the preview
Towards Palermo Classica 2026
The first event in the ‘Summer Music at the Viridarium’ series inaugurates the preview of the Palermo Classica Festival, marking the start of a journey leading up to the summer season. In this evocative setting, chamber music becomes the Festival’s first breath, an intimate moment that offers a foretaste of the atmospheres and sounds of the main programme. Admission is free, as an invitation to explore this extraordinary venue at your leisure. The Palazzo Steri Monumental Complex, the Festival’s official venue.
