CAFE

Since the Middle Ages, the expansionist policy of the Ottoman Empire had kept the Occident in suspense. In the 17th and 18th centuries, fascination for the foreign now triumphed over fear. The sultan's legations brought their way of life and culture to Europe, triggering a wave of enthusiasm for everything Turkish at the courts. Composers such as Lully and Fux began to write music in the Turkish style, inspired by the Janissary bands. Coffee, too, had advanced to become the indispensable elixir of life of the time, and it succeeded in doing what politics did not always manage to do: harmoniously unite the Orient and the Occident. Enjoying a cup of coffee together is like forty years of friendship, says a Turkish proverb, which the Pera Ensemble takes as an occasion to set off musically to places where coffee was once served: in the seraglio, pavilions and salons of fine society, with works by Lully, Porpora, Vivaldi, Handel, Ebu Bekir Aga, Kantemir and others.