Montefredane Voci Nuove Festival

Fifty years of new voices in the heart of Irpinia

The Voci Nuove Festival is the event that transforms Piazza Municipio in Montefredane—a village in the province of Avellino, Campania—into a stage for young singers, performers, and songwriters every summer. Founded in 1971 by Professor Elio Spagnuolo, who remains its soul and artistic director, the competition has surpassed half a century of activity, reaching its 37th edition in 2026. It is one of the longest-running singing competitions in Southern Italy and is part of the Grandi Festival Italiani della Musica circuit, twinned with other important national events dedicated to discovering new artists.

How the competition works

The festival spans two evenings and features multiple categories designed to accommodate every age and level of experience. The format is the classic town square singing competition, but with an organization that has become increasingly solid over the years: preliminary auditions, assigned songs, jury scoring, and the final awards ceremony. Winners can progress to the national finals of the circuit, and for many local Irpinian youths, the Montefredane square has been their first real stage.

• Children — the youngest performers open the festival on the first evening;
• Teenagers — the category reserved for the very young;
• Performers — covers and reinterpretations of the Italian repertoire, for ages 14 and up;
• Senior (Over 35) — for those who bring a few more years of stage experience to the competition;
• Originals — original songs by singer-songwriters and new proposals.

The live band, the hallmark

The element that distinguishes Montefredane from many other singing competitions is that all performances are accompanied by a live band: no backing tracks, just real musicians on stage. For the contestants, often very young, it means facing a truly professional experience, consisting of rehearsals, rapport with the instrumentalists, and the unpredictability of live sound. It is also the reason why the listening quality remains high evening after evening, as the audience is not watching karaoke but a real musical show.

A jury of professionals

The level of the judging panel is one of the reasons for the event's credibility. In recent editions, the presidency has been entrusted to maestro Vince Tempera, one of the most well-known composers, conductors, and arrangers in the Italian scene and director of the Grandi Festival Italiani. Working with him have been Professor Antonio Polidoro, a former teacher at the Naples Conservatory, and ethnomusicologist Luigi D'Agnese. The jury assigns scores for each category and also awards the audience's favorite, with a popular vote that has become a tradition of the children's evening.

The festival and the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

The two singing evenings are not an isolated event: they are part of the celebrations in honor of the Most Holy Virgin of Mount Carmel, the most heartfelt moment of the Montefredane summer. The religious program, with the novena, the solemn concelebration, and the procession, intertwines with the secular one: roving shows and street artists between Piazza Municipio and Castello Caracciolo, illuminations, fireworks, food stalls with local culinary specialties, and, to close, an evening of pop music and DJ sets. Visitors from out of town thus find both the singing competition and the town's patronal feast on the same weekend.

Montefredane, the village above the valley

Montefredane is located at an altitude of about 590 meters, a few kilometers from Avellino, in a panoramic position overlooking the valley. The historic center is clustered around Castello Caracciolo, and the town hall square becomes the true living room of the village on festive evenings: chairs lined up in front of the stage, balconies overlooking the scene, children running along the sides. It is a setting that is as worth the trip as the competition itself, because it captures the authentic atmosphere of summers in the small towns of Irpinia.

Why it is worth going

The Voci Nuove Festival is not a television showcase: it is a town competition that has become an institution, where you hear voices that no one knows yet and where the audience truly participates, applauding, commenting, and cheering. For fans of Italian song, it is a different way to spend a summer evening in Campania; for families, it is a free, open-air appointment with live music in one of the most affectionately rooted events in the territory.