The organisers of the Pažaislis Music Festival have been informed that due to an illness and a positive COVID-19 test, Dame Sarah Connolly, a mezzo-soprano from the United Kingdom, will not be coming to Lithuania.

However, on 21 June, the concert in the courtyard of Pažaislis Monastery will take place. An exceptional concert by the opera soloist, tenor Edgaras Montvidas will perform the French composer Ernest Chausson’s song cycle “Poem of Love and the Sea” together with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro Gintaras Rinkevičius.
Edgaras Montvidas, one of Lithuania’s most famous opera soloists, has performed in many of the leading opera houses, festivals and concert halls in Europe and the USA: Montvidas has appeared at the Covent Garden in London, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Komische Oper in Berlin, the English and Scottish National Theatres, the opera houses of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Oslo, Geneva, Dresden, Leipzig, Lyon, Bordeaux, the Santa Fe (USA), the Glyndebourne (UK), the Aix-en-Provence (France) festivals. He is a favourite of Lithuanian audiences and has been awarded the Golden Cross of the Stage, the Order of Merit for Lithuania, and the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art in 2023.
On 21 June, Montvidas will maintain the theme set by his colleague Dame S. Connolly – French Romanticism – by performing Ernest Chausson’s song cycle “Poem of Love and Sea”. According to Montvidas, the work is distinguished by its poetic quality, and it seems that not only the words but also the sounds are filled with the images that inspired the artist – the delicate lilacs, the azure of the sea and the sky, the falling leaves blown by the wind or the moonlight, and the air filled with the fragrance of flowers. In fact, this is a symbolist composition – Chausson uses sound and natural imagery to convey the human world, its feelings and experiences.