This is what Charles Burney wrote about his journey to Venice in August 1770:
“The city is famous for its conservatories, or music schools, of which it has four: the Ospedale della Pietà, the Ospidaletto of San Giovanni e Paolo, the Mendicanti, and the Incurabili; each of these gives a concert every Saturday and Sunday evening, and also on major feast days. I went to the Pietà the evening after my arrival, Saturday, August 4. The president, the Maestro di Cappella, is Signor Furlanetti, a priest, and the performers, both vocal and instrumental, are all girls; the organ, the violins, flutes, cellos, and even the horns are played by these women.”

Two hundred and fifty years have passed since this account, and that “even” should no longer be necessary—yet it unfortunately remains relevant, as demonstrated by the existence of orchestras and projects like the one we witnessed this evening at the Arvedi Auditorium. On stage was the Mediterranean Women’s Orchestra, an intercultural ensemble founded in 2009 with aims such as Music for Peace, Culture, and Education, promoting artistic projects in support of initiatives dedicated to human rights and to valuing the art and culture of the Mediterranean. The ensemble was led by the radiant energy and the clear, perfectly calibrated gesture of conductor Antonella De Angelis, together with the young violinist Yuki Serino. In this context, the concert “Women and Men Composers in Dialogue,” part of the 13th edition of the STRADIVARIFestival, became a powerful artistic and civic manifesto. It was an evening in which the intelligently and originally curated program intertwined styles, eras, and above all identities that history has unjustly kept in the shadows.

Mozart’s Symphony No. 15 K. 124 opened the concert and immediately highlighted the orchestra’s qualities: transparency of sound, elegant articulation, and expressive freshness that brought out a score brimming with youthful vitality. De Angelis rendered it with well-balanced attention to timbral blends and dynamic contrasts. A youthful Mozart, mirroring the very young age of much of the ensemble—compact and cohesive in the string sections, with a few smudges among the winds (venial sins forgiven in light of the aforementioned youthful reasons).

The thematic concept of the concert took full form with the performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 by Maddalena Laura Sirmen, a Venetian violinist and composer far too long relegated to the margins of music historiography, here performed in its premiere for the Arvedi audience. Bringing these pages—worthy of entering the repertoire in their own right—back to life was the excellent Yuki Serino, born in 2006 but already mature in her phrasing, capable of a violinistic voice that unites purity and ardor. Her clear, projected tone found in the orchestra a communicative ally, especially in the brilliant final Rondo, warmly received by the audience.

The section dedicated to late Romanticism offered an intense shift in emotional perspective: Grieg’s first Elegiac Melody(Hjertsår) unfolded like a suspended breath, while the most precious discovery of this second part of the concert was Heather Hill by Constance Warren—a refined, pastoral piece suffused with intimate melancholy. The Mediterranean Women’s Orchestra carefully brought out its harmonic nuances and quiet intensity.

In the second half, twentieth-century Poland introduced two complementary musical personalities. Grazyna Bacewicz’s Sinfonietta for Strings captivated with its rhythmic vitality and formal incisiveness: a neoclassical language, at times sharp-edged, rendered with vigor and precision. Closing the musical journey was Mieczysław Weinberg’s Concertino Op. 42, in which Yuki Serino confirmed the charisma and talent that the Cremona audience had already admired when she triumphed as winner of the first edition of the Città di Cremona Violin Competition. She mastered both the lyricism of the opening Allegretto and the more introspective yet virtuosic central movement, all the way to the communicative thrust of the finale, in a vivid dialogue with the orchestra—her perfectly matched partner in crime even in the most intricate and demanding passages of the score.

The added value of tonight’s concert goes beyond mere aesthetic experience: music reminds us that talent has no gender, even if history often has. Times have changed and undoubtedly improved regarding gender-based disparities: today, women composers find it less difficult to enter the programs of musical institutions, and many women now appear on the podium as conductors. Yet true equality is still far from achieved, considering that women make up only 30 percent of national orchestras. The Mediterranean Women’s Orchestra and Antonella De Angelis have shown just how powerful—artistically and socially—a cultural choice rooted in the principle of equality can be.

Thanks to the sensitivity of the STRADIVARIFestival’s artistic director, Cremona hosted an event that not only celebrated the beauty of the repertoire but rewrote it, bringing back to the center voices long silenced. As one leaves the Arvedi Auditorium, one senses that the path toward gender equality in music is no longer just a hope: it is a process already underway, resonating loud and clear in the performance of these splendid artists.

Photo service by Francesco Sessa Ventura