In 2019, the Lines of Torres Vedras were classified as a National Monument, a step towards safeguarding a vast heritage shared by the municipalities of Arruda dos Vinhos, Loures, Mafra, Sobral de Monte Agraço, Torres Vedras, and Vila Franca de Xira. This historical connection confirms the existence of a common identity to these municipalities and, when observing images and silent films from the first decades of the last century, we find that, as today, the daily life of the populations was far from the warlike dimension of the monument.
LINHAS, an itinerant project by AREPO – Companhia de Óperas e Artes Contemporâneas, invites local communities to revisit, through music and images, the Lines of Torres Vedras and its municipalities. The project consists of ‘Linhas’ – a concert film that revisits some historical images of the regions, directed by Patrícia Carreira and accompanied by a musical composition by Luís Soldado –, the presentation of a new arrangement, by Luís Raimundo, of Beethoven’s “A Victory of Wellington”, an exhibition of photographs and a debate, at the end, between creators, performers and the public.
The musical interpretation was in charge of an orchestra made up of professional musicians and music students from the municipalities involved, under the direction of conductor Rui Pinheiro.
Photographs were also collected from the local community of the founding municipalities of the Associação Rota Histórica das Linhas de Torres (Arruda dos Vinhos, Loures, Mafra, Sobral de Monte Agraço, Torres Vedras and Vila Franca de Xira) that were on display on the day of the event, at the Interpretation Centre of the Lines of Torres Vedras.
The AREPO project had a partnership with the Historic Route of the Lines of Torres and the support of DGARTES – Directorate-General for the Arts.
