Margaretha Maimone has been the creative and organizational force behind Ridotto from the beginning. Her vision of including relevant touches of theater in programs and of inviting artists of all disciplines to the classical concert stage has given Ridotto its flamboyant image and stellar reputation. Ridotto programs are carefully designed with a central theme and often include narrations, film, poetry, dance and marionettes. Top performers from all corners of the world have appeared in Ridotto. 

 

         Margaretha Maimone and pianist Monique Copper founded Ridotto in 1984 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands as a bright alternative to the traditional concert stage. In 1992 Ridotto continued in Huntington, Long Island where its first program was a Baroque Fashion show.

In the following years Margaretha created and re-created a great many works for the Ridotto stage, including the Mozart pantomime "Pantalone e Colombina, operas by Haydn (Armida, Il Mondo della Luna), Mozart (The Impresario, Bastien Bastienne, Il Re Pastore), Debussy, Poulenc, Albinoni, Gluck, Stravinsky and Rimsky Korsakov. She adapted a Lorca play into ‘Passion and Pride’, Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortileges for marionettes and constructed a mimeograph for Stravinsky's Renard and Debussy's The Fall of the House of Usher. Her motto: “Concerts should be a feast for the ear and a spectacle to watch.”

 

            Margaretha Maimone studied music in her native country of The Netherlands where she obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in violin performance at the Utrecht Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She was a member of the Amsterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Ballet Orchestras, co-founder and member of the Delta Ensemble for Contemporary Music and concert master of the North Holland Bach Orchestra. In the US she obtained a Master’s degree in Theater Arts from Stony Brook University. She is next to Ridotto active as a violinist and violin teacher, chamber music coach and writer of short stories.