The 2021-22 season of the opera theaters and festivals in Spain marked a before and after in the commitment to titles of the 20th century. While the Gran Teatre del Liceu devoted almost half of its programming to highly celebrated productions under the baton of Josep Pons, such as Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss (with which he dared to open), Pélleas et Mélisande by Debussy (with a brilliant Àlex Ollé for stage direction), Wozzeck by Alban Berg or War Requiem by Benjamin Britten (both starring an exultant Matthias Goerne), the Teatro Real in Madrid gave the absolute bell with the most organic and incredible operatic conception that the critics had ever had. the pleasure of seeing in years: Prokofiev's Angel of Fire, a national premiere (one hundred years later) that had a poetic credibility montage that bore the signature of Calixto Bieito, as well as the magnificent musical direction of Gustavo Gimeno, who in At that time, the next musical director of the Madrid arena had not yet been named.
The jury of the Ópera XXI Awards has today recognized this excellent work by awarding its annual awards. And although it has not awarded the award for best production to that title, it has also awarded the Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte, who played the leading role of this Angel of Fire, as best female singer.
This is perhaps the most national list of awards that Ópera XXI has failed in its five editions and since it took over from the Teatro Campoamor Lyric Awards that were held in Oviedo. The award for best male singer went to the tenor Ismael Jordi for the excellence and solvency with which he carried out a series of roles in large and smaller theaters: he was Gustavo in the zarzuela Los Gavilanes (J. Guerrero) at the Teatro of the Zarzuela; Fernando in the performances of Doña Francisquita (A. Vives) at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, and Des Grieux de la Manon (J. Massenet) that was seen at the Teatro Villamarta in Jerez.
The award for best young singer went to the baritone Carles Pachón for his performance in the role of Papageno in The Magic Flute presented by Oviedo. The Catalan singer has shown signs of having an excellent projection since he won the Mirna Lacambra award at Òpera de Sabadell, in the 2015-2016 season. Since then he has won the Viñas (2017) and Alfredo Kraus (2018) competitions, and this summer he was the first Neue Stimmen winner in Berlin, just before dazzling the Liceu audience in Don Pasquale.
The award for best new production went to the co-production carried out by the Villamarta de Jerez and Cervantes de Málaga theaters of the opera Diálogos de Carmelitas (F. Poulenc), directed by Francisco López, which premiered in Jerez last June. While the equivalent award in Latin America, which is delivered in collaboration with OLA (Ópera Latinoamérica), has been for the newly minted opera Patagonia, by the Chilean composer Sebastián Errázuriz, presented in world premiere and as a co-production by the Chilean coliseums Teatro del Lago and Biobío Theater. A trip to the origins of a culture and also of a local language in a dangerous state of extinction.
As the best initiative to promote and disseminate poetry, a category that the Liceu Under 35 participated in, for example, the jury recognized the work of Les Arts Volant, a cultural dissemination project of the Palau de les Arts in collaboration with the Diputació de València and the City Council to bring the opera to locations with little musical activity or where it would be difficult to carry out a performance due to lack of technical means or facilities. This project deploys a truck wherever it stops -twenty neighborhoods and localities dressed the season in question-, and the fifty thousand localities are occupied in a jiffy when the time of the function arrives.
On the other hand, the 27 theaters and institutions that are part of Ópera XXI, gathered in Assembly on December 15, 2022, have already announced the Honorary Awards of this fifth edition of the awards, which recognize professional career, the cultural institution and patronage entity that have stood out for their special work in promoting Spanish lyrical activity. The award for Professional Career went to the composer and conductor Miguel Ángel Gómez-Martínez; the honorific for the Cultural Institution went to the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, and the award for Best Patronage Initiative went to the Castell de Peralada Foundation
A jury of critics and journalists from the national and international press deliberated in the capital in the presence of the brand new president of Ópera XXI and director of the Teatro Villamarta de Jerez, Isamay Benavente; the coordinator of the awards, Nieves Pascual, and the secretary of the association and general director of the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Jorge Culla.
