Darius Stabinskas & Alina Rotaru
The cellist Darius Stabinskas (b. 1966), who has been running the Banchetto musicale festival since 2003, is the spiritus movens of the ancient music movement in Lithuania. He studied the cello at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the viola da gamba as a student of Roberto Gini at the Scuola Civica di Musica in Milan. Stabinskas has directed various instrumental ensembles, and has prepared and realised a number of ancient music projects, the most important of which are the production of the comic opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alchina by Francesca Caccini, the operatic scenas by Claudio Monteverdi Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Il ballo delle ingrate, Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, John Blow’s opera Venus and Adonis, the musical France: 1700, Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio St Casimir, King of Poland, the historical programme Italian Music in the House of Vasa (Italų muzika Vazų dvare), From Braunsberg Organ Tablature (Iš Braunsbergo vargonų tabulatūros), Marco Scacchi, Student and Teacher (Marco Scacchi – mokinys ir mokytojas), and other works. In 2016, together with his wife Alina Rotaru, a German harpsichordist of Romanian descent, Stabinskas founded the Morgaine ensemble. Rotaru is a professor at Bremen University of the Arts, and performs as a soloist in Europe, Japan and the USA. Her style is defined by artistry, expressiveness and outstanding technique. This musical couple continue to develop ambitious ancient music projects in Lithuania and abroad.