The Life Victoria will celebrate a decade of existence with a stage show that revolves around the love correspondence between the composer Reynaldo Hahn and the writer Marcel Proust signed by the French Vicent Huguet and which has been seen in Aix-en-provence. Hahn
“The montage features the sopranos Irene Mas Salom and Mercedes Gancedo, who are two girls who come home from the opera and have a drink while rediscovering these cards –explains the artistic director of Life Victoria, Marc Busquets–. In fact, those of Proust exist, because those of Hahn were destroyed. And in the montage they are interspersed as if the girls' family had inherited them”.
The reading of these letters is done by identifying with Proust's feelings, given that he and Hahn were a couple and influenced each other widely. At that time, the musician was still more famous than the author because when they met in 1894, he had not yet published In Search of Lost Time. In the initial correspondence, emotion and fascination can be perceived, to finally reach rupture and disappointment, says Busquets.
Disciple of the filmmaker and stage director Patrice Chéreau, who died in 2013, Vicent Huguet acted as a repositor when his production of Elektra landed at the Liceu, a little over five years ago. He recently directed Manon Lescaut at the Paris Opera and the Mozart-Da Ponte Trilogy with Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper Berlin. And he is also the one who directed Juliet Binoche and the pianist Alexandre Tharaud in the tribute to the singer Barbara that was programmed at the Peralada Festival.
This edition of the Victoria de los Ángeles festival in Barcelona has time and melancholy as its central theme. The president of the foundation, Helena Mora, and Busquets presented the program at the Sant Pau Modernist Site. Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler will have a great role.
One of the objectives of this edition is to deny that opera and poetry are two opposite worlds. The program is designed so that they “meet”, taking the figure of Strauss as a reference. "It is in his operas that these two worlds come together best," argues Busquets.
The soprano Fatma Said will open the festival on September 28 at Sant Pau together with the pianist Malcolm Martineau with a program on nostalgia and the Spleen concept, popularized by Charles Baudelaire, which explores the passing of time and criticizes Parisian melancholy.
Among other artists who have already debuted at the festival such as Said, Busquets has highlighted the soprano Anne Schwanewilms, who will perform with the Los Angeles Victoria Symphony Orchestra, and Samuel Hässelhorn with a program focused on Schumann. This year's resident artists are the aforementioned Mallorcan soprano Irene Mas Salom, the English pianist Joseph Middleton and Vicent Huguet.
Middleton will perform together with Miah Persson, and Louise Alder with whom he will perform Strauss's Four Last Songs, and with Dame Sarah Connolly at the closing of the festival, on November 21 in Sant Pau.
