The public of a summer cultural event that, like the Castell de Peralada Festival, wants to be exquisite could not go on for a longer time settling in beach chairs at the Auditori del Parc. The space that year after year specializes in opera and dance delicacies and goes perfecting its acoustics with false walls, a reform was due in this sense. But the Suqué-Mateu family, organizers of the event, has gone much further and this March will begin work on a new auditorium that will be permanent, not removable, and that, although it will continue to be outdoors, will have a stage multipurpose and with an attached building of 6,000 usable m² that will house a multipurpose rehearsal room to host artist residencies, a future performing arts classroom and a museum space to put the history of the festival in context.
The Jordi Marcé Arquitectes team, a specialist in urban planning, is in charge of the construction project, which has a budget of more than four million euros. The work will last a year, so the edition of the festival will be testimonial this summer, limiting the performances to the church of El Carme and its cloister. The poster will be announced this spring but as La Vanguardia has learned, among the performances it is worth noting the return to the festival of Jordi Savall.
The new building, whose stalls will have a capacity of 1,566 seats, will respond to a contemporary look while remaining respectful of the monumental heritage environment, according to the festival director, Oriol Aguilà. "It will integrate into the landscape with a spirit of Empúries, of the Mediterranean..."
"The approach is that this space has a polyvalence so that it can be the performing arts classroom of the Empordà". explains Aguilà visibly excited. "In the Empordà, the festival occupies the same place that the Liceu occupies in Barcelona, the Teatro Real in Madrid or the Maestranza in Seville, a stage to which, for example, great dance companies can be invited",
Having a house means a radical change for this festival whose spirit is to produce operas, since this allows them to work backstage in a seasonally adjusted way, investing the month of June for rehearsals in the big room. The assembly countdown is over. "Everything you can do already in spring changes our lives," says Aguilà.
"And then there are the cultural activities that we generate in the territory: all those of the Campus d'Estiu -he adds-, which are growing: all the actors in the territory are asking us for them. Having a house will allow us to do activities all year round. Now we are contacting international choreographers, musical directors and others to organize residences and educational activities. Because Peralada is an international festival of great figures and it will continue to be so, but we can now exercise that vocation that we have to serve the genius loci".
The threats of rain that can eventually force the cancellation of an event in the Empordà summers have not been a decisive factor in building a covered auditorium. The seating area will continue to be outdoors, although walls will be raised to improve acoustics and protect the operatic sound from the Empordà breeze.
Behind the stage there will be a loggia with this museum space that will allow the entire trajectory of the contest to be valued. And in the backstage the rehearsal and audiovisual rooms will be located. "We are studying that the stage has the necessary versatility to be able to do shows in room B within it -continues Aguilà-. This would allow bringing an audience in winter, since the change in geolocation that the pandemic has led to suggests that more people prefer repopulate rural areas than live in large capitals. If that evolves, within five years we could generate more winter activity with this building."
The Festival thinks of expanding the activity for the rest of the year but is not committed to a covered auditorium. Because?
"We have discussed it a lot, assessing pros and cons, conducting surveys... We even had a covered auditorium project, but the truth is that, in addition to the fact that the surroundings are beautiful, summer nights are to be enjoyed outdoors", assures Isabel Suqué, president of the Castell de Peralada Foundation that organizes the Festival.
Aguilà emphasizes that, statistically, cancellations due to rain occur one day every seven years, which is very little. And they don't want to do shows all year either. "Making a realistic analysis of occupations in the area, it is clear that the concentration takes place from spring to early autumn. It would not make sense at this time," argues Aguilà. "In addition, the pandemic has confirmed that the public in the Mediterranean wants open air in summer. The proof is that the Grand Théâtre de Provence, which was built and inaugurated with great artistic pomp, has not compensated for the liturgy of the Archevêché in the open air in Aix-en-Provence".
Artists, stage directors, collaborators... they are all moved when Peralada tells them that the reason for not holding a big festival this year is that they have that project on their hands. "Theaters and festivals assure us that having a venue will change our projection -continues the artistic director-. If we add the venue and the oentourism and leisure offer of the Peralada Resort to the programming and hospitality of the family, we will recover that European public which before the pandemic accounted for 30% of the total. From the Generalife in Granada to Archevêché, there is no other opera and dance festival in the entire Mediterranean corridor".
The work is expected to be ready in March 2024. Not because it has to be used during the Easter festival, which since 2023 has established Peralada as a permanent novelty in the Carme church, but to be able to start working on the summer edition. The brand new auditorium would thus host that announced Aida by Verdi that the pandemic forced to cancel and that will continue to have the original cast: Sondra Radvanovsky, Piotr Beczala, Anita Rachvelishvili and Carlos Álvarez. All of them keep the gap in their agendas to be able to carry it out.
"We are entering a three-year period that begins with the inauguration of the auditorium and ends in 2026 with the 40th anniversary of the Festival," announces Aguilà, which means that other items will have to be added to the 4 million euros for adjacent projects and artistic bets from international level. Peralada has knocked on the doors of public administrations in search of financial support, but since the construction is located in a private area such as the gardens of the Castle, so far it has not received any favorable response.
"We are not throwing in the towel because it is still a public service, but we must study the way in which they can help us," warns Aguilà. At the moment they have requested Next Generation European funds for the audiovisual of the Peralada channel. Although the building must be erected first, otherwise, even though the festival has existed for 37 years, it is in limbo for those funds, it is not part of a census of existing parks that the Next Generation want to rehabilitate or modernize.
"This project is done because of the illusion that the family has to continue with something that our parents created" concludes the president of the festival that her mother founded, Carmen Mateu. "If it is not for illusion, dream and patronage it would not be done."
