Jean-Claude ACQUAVIVA - François ARAGNI - Petr'Antò CASTA - Paul GIANSILY - Stéphane SERRA - Maxime VUILLAMIER
Founded in 1978, this formation, whose principle objective was to participate in the preservation of the island's oral heritage, has largely opened up to the outside world whilst staying anchored in its homeland. The group is characterized by an inventiveness that is continually renewed and exacting performances.
The many collaborations along the way have stimulated the group's creativity and enriched its repertoire, and have led to involvement in theatre, film music and contemporary dance.
"The group A Filetta was born in October 1978. Back then we did not know, and we still do not, if this was the dream of an outline or the outline of a dream. The sketch of a house that is always open, where intertwined souls can find refuge, who in their quest for eternity, weave and reweave the threads of this ancient way of sharing that is song. The dream of a ship without a port that has left nowhere to sail elsewhere, where immemorial lighthouses could perhaps, one day, tell it : 'it is there, among you, in the shared ephemeral, that vast stretches of eternal happiness are to be found.'"
LIBERATION
“… A FILETTA have become one of the premier groups in Corsican traditional music thanks to their tenacity, knowledge of Corsican polyphony, above all their constant renewal and the openness of their island repertoire to offshore influences...”
LE MONDE
“A show for eleven dancers, seven singers and a musician in which Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui returns to a visual sobriety centred on the dancing body, with a great deal of work on movement and rhythm. The work is also sublimated by the breathtaking majesty of the songs of Corsican vocal ensemble A Filetta and Libanese singer Fadia Tomb El-Hage. (...) The seven voices fill the space like gently blowing up a balloon. A penetration, full of finesse, with a limpid polyphonic texture and an elastic magnitude which takes in both the traditional Corsican and the oriental repertoires of the artists.
L’HUMANITE
“Far from fixing the score, the group's polyphony finds its force, on the contrary, in the life and emotions generated by work on the voice timbres of each of its members. Guttural sounds, nasal musicality in certain syllables, mix of intonations... All the art of A Filetta's singers is reinforced by a complex harmony of which only they have the secret.”
L’EXPRESS
"A FILETTA's voices speak to the skin as much as to the ear... A Filetta sing the soul of their island with a universal talent.”
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR
“They are one of the most sumptuous of Corsican polyphonic groups that can be heard... Without being untrue to themselves, A FILETTA have been able to open their immemorial art to other forms of expression, notably by working on film music with the composer Bruno Coulais…”
LE FIGARO
“A Filetta, or the Corsican universe”. “A Filetta conquer new aesthetic territories and invent new forms.”
LA TERRASSE
“Independent and creative, A Filetta reaffirm their refusal to let themselves be reduced to being the guardians of the temple of the island's vocal art, fixed and devoted only to heritage, but rather give life to an inspired ensemble, certainly rooted in their native land but all the better to keep their nose to the wind, or as is the case today, look to the sky like the fern from which they have taken their name.”
MONDOMIX
“A Filetta, the open song”. “The seven Corsican singers of the polyphonic group A Filetta have pursued a demanding but open road since 1978, linking an ageless oral culture to written traditions, without forgetting to go out and meet the world."
