Amidst the hills of Southern Tuscany, a new music festival with local roots and British connections

Forum Bertarelli front entrance with glass canopy at dusk.

This summer a new festival is launching in Tuscany embedded in the wine-growing area. Amiata Music is an annual festival which has evolved from the Fondazione Bertarelli’s successful Amiata Piano Festival which since 2015 has been based at the Forum Fondazione Bertarelli, a contemporary concert hall designed by architect Edoardo Milesi and situated in the province of Grosseto. The Forum Fondazione Bertarelli is located amongst the Bertarelli family’s award-winning wine estates and the Montecucco agriturismo which has been lovingly restored over the last two decades. 

Looking after the new Amiata Music festival are creative director Nicholas Chalmers and executive director Rosenna East. East and Chalmers previously worked together at Nevill Holt Opera where they oversaw the significant growth of the summer opera festival, its charitable education and community programme, and the build and opening of its multiple award-winning opera theatre in 2018.

Amiata Music's 2026 season opens on 26 July with a gala where Nicholas Chalmers conducts Sinfonia Smith Square Orchestra in collaboration with the Florence-based opera training and performance company, Mascarade Opera with young singers including Floriana Cicio, Claudia Perreira, Garrett Evers and Charles Buttigieg. Other events include tenor Laurence Kilsby with Alessandro Quarta and Concerto Romano for Care Gemme, a programme exploring the birth of Italian opera through music by Claudio Monteverdi, Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Sarro.

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato brings her project Emily — No Prisoner Be. This genre-defying collaboration with Time for Three, featuring music by Kevin Puts inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson. DiDonato's residency also includes masterclasses and the launch of the Italian Songbook
Project, working with young singers from Mascarade Opera Academy and local ensembles.

Other visitors include bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado and his jazz sextet, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante in Vivaldi, baritone Luca Micheletti and pianist Malcolm Martineau, and pianist Alice Sara Ott in Field and Beethoven. In the autumn, the young Italian ensemble Trio Concept is in residence as part of a week-long, creative retreat, with a public concert at the end of the process.

Alongside its concert and talent developments programmes, Amiata Music is committed to education and community engagement through initiatives for schools across the Grosseto region and a programme of concerts for the whole family.

Full details from the Amiata Music website.