Comparing Harnoncourt’s interpretations with the way we were being taught in the Palermo Conservatory was surrealistic! I knew I had to find another way of doing things. Harnoncourt showed me the way to get to the heart of the works. My affection for Vivaldi and Bach strengthened my desire to think about this repertoire in a new way, and to re-conquer forgotten territory.

Sicily was a rather inward-looking island, and I decided to leave. At the age of fourteen, after a year of violin tuition, I left Palermo and my family. I went to Parma and continued studying with Anna Maria Catoni, a violinist in I Musici, from Rome, who also taught at the conservatory in Parma. I worked really hard, playing seven hours a day. I was steeped in the echoes of baroque music, which played a strong role in moulding me as a teenager. I was also surrounded by friends, and founded Europa Galante with them a few years later.

Does your interest in early music stem from imaginary forays into the past to forge links between the various arts?

I grew up in Sicily among the ruins of Greek and Roman civilizations, and find architectural remains—the signs of a sublime culture—fascinating. Antique tragedies were models that particularly inspired the baroque period; the baroque is constantly harking back to antiquity.

Greek and Roman civilizations still exercise a profound influence on us today. Western cultural identity is built on them. One can imagine an unbroken line of heritage stretching from the Greeks to the Hellenistic period and right up to the present time.

This is extremely obvious in baroque opera, which actually recreates the atmosphere of the antique world. It’s very moving to me to see and hear Julius Caesar on the stage. I’ve had this feeling since I was very young, when this type of music was completely ignored, even by specialist groups. The only way to hear the operas of Handel, for example, was to listen to the Handel Society’s 33 RPMs that were imported from New York. Orlando, among others, was an incredible revelation to me. Now baroque operas productions play to full houses all over the world. Peoples’ tastes evolve, and interest develops for different types of art.

The public’s high esteem for the notion of beauty combined with today’s aesthetics and sensibilities shows that the past is still very much alive. But before you turned to opera, you concentrated on instrumental music.

It was still the case—and not so long ago—that people imagined opera began in the nineteenth century, when in fact it originated in the seventeenth century. Italians tended for a long while to ‘forget’ this historical fact, which was obscured in the nineteenth century. < p /> Can you describe what attracted you to the baroque violin when you were a teenager?

I was touched by the instrument’s slight sourness, and felt as though I were returning to the origins of sound and discovering an ancient and forgotten purity. It was as if I heard the call of the original sound. Other students shared my curiosity at a time when almost no one was interested in our research; people thought we were mad. And I have to admit that no one played very well back then. Baroque instruments were just beginning to break onto the scene. Modern players criticised their lack of precision, but technique has changed a lot since then.

How do you account for the recent lively interest in the Baroque and its music? It seems as though there is a lot in common between the present day and the centuries of the past.

This was an understandable reaction in the face of musical practices that were becoming repetitive. The good old days, when strong personalities like Milstein, Heifetz and Oistrakh stood out, were over. Other musicians played in a stereotyped way and their interpretations were all the same. All unusual forms of expression were toned down; Vivaldi was played like Brahms and Brahms like Debussy! A kind of lassitude set in. The renaissance of baroque music showed that music must be based on musicological knowledge. This stimulates fresh confrontations with the works and acts as a stimulant, bringing new energy to our relationship with music.