Admittedly, the MAfestival’s programme focuses on a much later period than Bruges’ cosmopolitan heyday: the 17th and 18th centuries, when westerners developed a craze for all things foreign as a result of the giddy spirit of discovery and colonial expansion that swept over Europe. It was a time of growing confidence and arrogance, when Rembrandt painted himself coiffed with a turban and dainty chinoiseries took over the decorative arts. A time when coffee and croissants were served in Vienna as a symbolic revenge on Turkey, the Habsburgs’ age-old foe that had been defeated in 1683, and when Couperin, Rameau, Purcell and Mozart couched strange sounds from foreign lands into their own compositions, often taming them beyond recognition.

Musical and operatic exoticism was a loose, shifting notion that relied more on fantasy than actual observation, an art of ornament and excess, a merry jumble of turbans, feathers, classical deities and papier-mâché palm trees. China, Peru, Turkey and even Spain were all bundled up into one single, vague idea of foreignness. Who can really tell the difference between the ‘Imperial’ and ‘Piedmontese’ styles in Couperin’s Les Nations? (The piece will be played on 10 August by Skip Sempé and his Capriccio Stravagante). Or between these and the South America depicted by Rameau in Les Indes Galantes? (to be performed on 12 August by Alexis Kossenko and Arte dei Suonatori).

The festival will open and end with two masterpieces of the genre: Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Turkish Ballet, the end-piece of Molière’s brilliant social satire Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. An over-the-top extravaganza with splendid, rousing music, the ballet will be the highlight of ‘Quel Charmant Spectacle!’, a mixed platter of stately 17th-century pieces presented on opening night by French lutanist Vincent Dumestre (shown above) and his ensemble Le Poème Harmonique. The work owes its existence to a diplomatic encounter that turned sour between the French king Louis XIV and a snooty Turkish envoy. Louis, ever determined to have the last laugh, had responded by commissioning this ‘ballet turc ridicule’ (6 August).

Mozart’s iconic Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail was composed almost exactly a century later. It both summed up and surpassed existing exotic conventions with its bright choruses that echoed the warlike drums and fifes of Soliman II’s janissary bands, its haunting arias in veiled minor keys and even its sprinkling of cultural relativism. It will be presented, in an abridged concert version, along with other turqueries, by Belgium’s zesty ensemble B’Rock, with conductor Frank Agsteribbe and a surprise performer (15 August).

In between these two towering events are many more treats not to miss: a forgotten opera by Christoph Graupner (7 August); a concert tracing the common origins of Baroque music and flamenco (13 August); an excursion into late 19th- and early 20th- century French piano repertoire by Antwerp-based French pianist Claire Chevallier (12 August); and several recitals of harpsichord pieces by Couperin, Rameau, Forqueray and Frescobaldi, featuring, among others the great Gustav Leonhardt, and providing a quiet foil to all the pomp and glitter (9, 10 and 13 August). Not to forget a one-day, mini- festival set in the nearby village of Lissewege and providing small concerts and refreshments served under a Moroccan tent (8 August). Coffee and croissants, no doubt, will be on the menu.

6-15 August
Across Bruges
www.mafestival.be