Violin Museum Opens In Cremona

A museum dedicated to violins, music making and luthiers – including Antonio Stradivari and his family – is opening in Cremona in northern Italy. Cremona has an impressive violinmaking legacy since it was home to the workshop of revered luthier Antonio Stradivari. Today it has an International Violinmaking School (Scuola Internazionale di Liuteria) and there are approximately 150 violinmaking workshops in the town. The Stradivari Museum was located in the collection at the Town Hall, but items housed there and at the Ala Ponzone Civic Museum have been moved to the new Violin Museum that opens on 14 September 2013. The Violin Museum is dedicated to the origins and history of the violin and stringed instruments. It focuses on the technical and acoustic peculiarities of violins, the main events in the lives of the most important Cremonese violinmaking families, and Cremonese violins throughout the world. The museum displays works by Andrea Amati, Antonio and Girolamo Amati, Nicolò Amati, Antonio Stradivari, Francesco Rugeri, Carlo Bergonzi, Ferdinando Gagliano, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, and Andrea Guarneri, his son Giuseppe and grandson Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù. The museum also gives space to musical performances, to bring sound and interactivity to a place where, often, instruments are locked away in cabinets. Visitors can listen to fragments of concerts, performances by famous players, interviews with virtuosos and compositions for the violin. There is a projection hall and the 450-seat, violin-shaped Giovanni Arvedi Auditorium for concerts. The opening of the Violin Museum is being celebrated by the five-week long Stradivari Festival, which runs from 14 September to 13 October. The festival comprises a series of concerts, exhibitions and conferences.