Date and location

from November 28, 2025 until November 30, 2025
Orpheus Instituut, Korte Meer 12, 9000 Ghent (Belgium)

Oddities & Rarities

Eventfrom November 28, 2025 until November 30, 2025

2025 Edition - Real and unreal

Oddities & Rarities breaks down the boundaries between art forms, historical periods, reality and fiction. Through the eyes of the nineteenth-century Romantics, we translate their fascination with the sublime and the inexplicable into sound, words, images, light and even the supernatural.

The past is not a fixed reality, but a landscape shaped by memory, imagination and desire. For the Romantics of the nineteenth century, history was never merely a record of facts, but a domain where reason clashed with emotion, science with mystery, and reality coexisted alongside fantasy.

The second edition of Oddities & Rarities aims to transcend the artificial boundaries between art forms, historical periods, reality and fiction. Through the eyes of the Romantics, the festival explores their fascination with the sublime and the inexplicable, translated into sound, word, image, light, and even the supernatural.

From 28 to 30 November 2025, Le Vecchie Musiche will present seven exceptional performances, complemented by two afternoon lectures by researchers Hannah Welslau (spiritualism) and Pauline Lebbe (symbolism in music). Together with partners such as Orpheus Instituut, the Labo XIX-XX research group of the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp and ARIA (Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts), the festival invites the public to explore the tensions and connections between intuition and reason, dream and reality, magic and modernity, and thus discover new perspectives on the Romantic imagination and its legacy today.