The Kona Music Festival will be held for the fourth time in October, this time at the National Museum of Iceland. The festival is organized by the ReykjavíkBarokk Chamber Group, in collaboration with the National Museum of Iceland and the Music Fund. The festival consists of three concerts and guided tours of the museum’s main exhibition „Making a nation“. Different items and parts of history will be the focus of each event. The music is by women who broke away from the traditional roles of their time.

The guided tour will begin in the museum’s lobby at 2 pm and will be followed by a concert on the 2nd floor.

Guests only pay the regular admission fee to the museum during the festival events. Admission to the museum is equivalent to an annual pass, so guests can enjoy all the festival events for one price.

‍Halldóra’s letter and Francesca’s opera – Year 1625

The year 1625 is the focus of this concert, a year in which two pioneers made their mark on history, one in Iceland and the other in Italy. The concert will feature music from the opera La liberazione di Ruggiero (1625) by the Italian composer Francesco Caccini (1587-1640). The opera is one of the first known to have been performed in public and the oldest surviving by a female composer. Arias, operatic choruses and instrumental music are interwoven with mass chant from Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson’s hymnbook, Grallarannum, which was published in 1594 and therefore in widespread use in Iceland when Caccini composed his opera in Italy. In August 1625, Halldóra (1573-1658), daughter of Bishop Guðbrand Þorláksson of Hólar, wrote a letter to the King of Denmark, which is the oldest surviving letter by an Icelandic woman. In the letter, Halldóra asked to be given the position of local governor of Hólar during her father’s illness – she was granted the position six months later. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful year in the lives of these women, we bring them together through the music that surrounded their existence.

Performers:
ReykjavíkBarokk
Ásta Sigríður Arnardóttir, soprano
Lilja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir, alto