History
The idea of founding an ensemble of Renaissance music and dance came to the mind of Jūratė Mikiškaitė-Vičienė in the end of 1985. The musician living in Trakai she considered it would be amazing to fill the Trakai Castle, under restoration at that time, with sounds, costumes, moments of balls coming from times when the castle was in its flourishing. A number of active musical groups that already existed in some cities of the former Soviet Union, - Tallinn, Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg), Moscow - were the source of primary knowledge for performing the early music and of variety of its styles. Those groups were helpful in acquiring the first music notes and copies of authentic Renessaince instruments. Efforts to create theatrical programmes on stage or in their historical surroundings with Renaissance dances being the main feature could be regarded as innovative. There were no specialists of this field in the nearest countries. So it seems we were the first who started recreating Renaissance dances in the former Soviet Union or even in the Eastern Europe. The real enthusiast of this task was Giedrė Kantminaitė-Strikulienė who has been a dancer of "BANCHETTO MUSICALE" for years. Now she is teaching children this form of art in the group of "Puelli Vilnenses" where she is the director. She persuaded Jūratė Bičkauskienė, Vytautas Šinkūnas and Gintaras Kasteckas, the other three former members of the Vilnius University Ensemble of Song and Dance, to join the newly formed ensemble. The musicians group was formed by Paulius Koncė, the initial enthusiast of longitudinal flute in Lithuania, and his three students from B.Dvarionas Musical School. K. Mikiška, V. Mikiškaitė, A.Šumskas, A.Mišeikis and others played on wind instruments. The idea of the group importance was supported by Trakai Palace of Culture. The organization took the ensemble under its patronage and bought the harpsichord, a rear instrument in Lithuania of that time.
The activity of the ensemble should be reckoned from the date of the first premiere and it was on the 28th of February 1986, when a programme "Echoes of Bygone Centuries" was presented in Trakai Palace of Culture with singers G. Skerytė and A. Janutas participating.
A.Shumilov, an authority on Renaissance wind instruments who arrived from St. Petersburg, helped in producing the musical part of the programme. He was also present in making the first recordings of the ensemble on the Lithuanian Radio even before the premiere. Dances were being staged according to Russian choreographic textbooks from the XIXc. The audiences warmly welcomed the ensemble that looked exotic and bold in those times and reminded of the prosperity and culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, something Soviet ideologists tried to forget... The concerts were given in Trakai Castle, various Lithuanian cities, we took part in festivals of early music in Šiauliai and Viljandi, Estonia. The Television of Lithuania filmed a concert of the ensemble. In summer of 1987 we went to the Youth festival in Hungary that was our first trip further abroad. Up to that time the splendid, stylish Renaissance costumes were made, dancers even had three different ones (during the first months the ensemble used costumes borrowed from various theatres).
In 1989 the ensemble moved to Vilnius and assumed the name "BANCHETTO MUSICALE" ("Musical banquet" in Italian). The space for rehearsals was provided by the administration of the Technical Library that is situated in an old historical building. In those small spaces of the library a few chamber programmes were presented with the participation of the actor G.Storpirštis. The audiences of St. Petersburg were shown the programme adapted for theatre and dedicated to Barbora Radvilaite. Actors A. Giniotis and S. Jačėnas took part in that programme. One of the concerts took place in the magnificent Palace of Menshikov. It was for the employees of the Hermitage and they highly appreciated the programme of the ensemble, all its segments, praising especially the accuracy of the costumes, dancers' manners, and the overall spirit of the performance. The second stage of the "BANCHETTO MUSICALE" began with the acquaintance with Barbara Sparti, a world famous researcher of historical dance from Rome. Having arrived to Vilnius on her own means she changed the repertoire of the dances introducing the sources of Renaissance Dance- ancient books, the system of steps, descriptions of dances, showing the differences between the 15th and 16th centuries. That inspired the ensemble to create new programmes, performances became more vivid and lively.
With the beginning of the Revival (Atgimimas) there were more foreign tours - we twice visited Moscow for the festival of early music, a number of trips were arranged to Latvia, Estonia, and Germany. "BANCHETTO MUSICALE" were the first representatives of the independent Lithuania shown on the Luxembourg TV. The ensemble gave concerts in Oslo, in the hall of Nobel Prize ceremony and in the city hall. Together with the famous Estonian group "HORTUS MUSICUS" Lithuanian dancers produced the programme "Festa a ballo", recreating a feast in Naples in 1620. This programme was shown to audiences of Tallinn (Estonia) and Joensu (Finland) festivals, as well as Vilnius festival of "Banchetto musicale" that takes place anually since 1989. The ensemble took part in numerous performances staged for those festivals. In 1994 it was a programme of the Ball of the 15th century, directed by Lieven Baert, a director from Belgium, in 1995 an opera of H. Purcell "Dido and Aeneas", director Jane Gingell from the UK, and commedia dell'arte project "Festa Veneziana" in 2000 directed by Italian Enricco Pecolli among others.
On the 9th of July, 2004 the ensemble participated in drama performance "Barbora Radvilaitė" (the play by J. Grušas, directed by V. Pauliukaitis) staged in the yard of Trakai Castle.
World famous experts of historic dances - Barbara Segal and Jane Gingell from London, Lieven Baert from Belgium and Kay Sylegard from Stockholm - worked with the ensemble. Alina Sažina and Jūratė Bičkauskienė were directors of the group dancers‘for several years. Lately Virginija Gaudiešiūtė- Jašinskienė is the director of dancers.
Lithuanian Television created seven more noticeable works based on BANCHETTO MUSICALE programmes: "Renaissaince Music Concert" filmed in various places of the Old Town of Vilnius and in the Medininkai Castle, a studio-recorded concert "A Musical Ball", a musical film "A Day in Castle", shot in the Trakai Castle and its surroundings, and two parts for series „Echoes of Palace Majesty" and „Visions and Reality" each. Those were dedicated to the programme „The Ball of the 15th century" and to commemorate the 400 years jubilee of Bona Sforza.
