There is a particular quality to the light in Menton at dusk in late July. The sun drops behind the Ligurian hills slowly, as if reluctant to leave, and the old town — its ochre and terracotta façades stacked above the harbour like a stage set — holds the warmth long after the shadows arrive. By the time the audience begins to fill the seats in front of the Basilique Saint-Michel, the sky above the Piazza della Chiesa has turned the colour of faded saffron, and the air carries the faint salt of the sea a hundred metres below.
This is the setting that has drawn musicians and audiences to Menton every summer for more than seven decades. On 29 July 2026, the 77th Festival de Musique de Menton continues that tradition with a programme dedicated entirely to Vivaldi — performed by cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, the Ensemble Jupiter, and lutenist and director Thomas Dunford.
A Stage That Earns Its Reputation
The Basilique Saint-Michel Archange is not a concert hall, and that is precisely the point. Built in the seventeenth century in the Baroque style, it dominates the highest square in Menton's old town — a square that is, for the weeks of the festival, transformed into one of the most atmospheric open-air venues on the French Riviera. The stone paving, the twin bell towers rising against the darkening sky, the scent of warm limestone: the architecture does not merely frame the music, it participates in it. Baroque repertoire, performed here, sounds as though it was always intended for exactly this kind of space.
The festival itself was founded in 1950 and has, over the course of 77 editions, established a reputation for pairing serious musical programming with a setting that few European summer festivals can rival. The address — Place de l'Église, 06500 Menton — is deceptively simple for somewhere so singular.
'The square becomes a kind of open-air nave — the music rises, and the walls of the old town hold it in place.'
The Programme: Vivaldi and Three Performers Worth Knowing
The evening is built around Antonio Vivaldi, the Venetian priest and composer whose influence on Baroque string writing remains, three centuries on, impossible to overstate. His concertos and sonatas demand precision and vitality in equal measure — qualities that make the choice of performers here feel deliberate rather than incidental.
Nicolas Altstaedt is a cellist of considerable standing in the European chamber and concert music world, known for an approach that balances technical authority with interpretive intelligence. Thomas Dunford, who directs the ensemble from the lute, has become one of the most compelling figures in the early music scene — his instrument providing both harmonic foundation and a quietly commanding presence at the centre of the ensemble. The Ensemble Jupiter, which Dunford co-founded, has built its reputation on precisely this kind of programme: Baroque repertoire performed with period awareness and a certain freshness of attack.
Together, the three bring to Menton a combination that is well-suited to outdoor performance: music that carries in open air, played by musicians accustomed to the particular demands of live acoustic spaces.
For visitors already on the Riviera in late July, the logistics are straightforward. Menton sits at the eastern edge of the Côte d'Azur, minutes from the Italian border, and is easily reached by train from Nice or Monaco. The old town requires a short walk uphill from the station — past the market, past the lemon trees for which the town is famous — before the square opens out above you, unexpectedly wide and luminous.
Arrive before the concert begins. The view from the square at dusk, with the bay of Menton spread below and the first stars appearing above the bell towers, is not incidental to the evening — it is, in its own way, part of the programme. For further information and ticketing, the festival's official site is festival-musique-menton.fr.