For the knowledgeable public, there was something that from the beginning of the concert did not go well with the great Vivica Genaux at the Palau de la Música. His usual volume was lacking, the coloraturas were less luminous... But even so, his arias by Vivaldi, which he performed together with the Bach Consort Wien within the Ibercamera cycle, while the feminist demonstrations of 8-M were still active on the Gran Via from Barcelona, had been taking shape throughout the evening.
Until at the end of the second part, when she still had two arias and a batch of encores to sing, the American artist was forced to stop. She tried twice with "Gelido in ogni vena", from the opera Farnace, but something prevented her from controlling her vocal emission. But the public, far from being disappointed, gave her a warm and long applause in solidarity with her circumstances and she was satisfied with the ensemble repeating one of the Four Seasons with which Genaux's interventions were interspersed.
"The public is very good here, you see very normal people, not stuffy at all," said a Berlin journalist who had been invited to this opening of the Barcelona Obertura Spring Festival with a one hundred percent Vivaldi program.
In fact, the assistants had been warned when they returned from the break. The director of the Consort, the Argentine Rubén Dubrovsky, had gone to the room to apologize on behalf of the mezzo-soprano because, as he pointed out, "he has breathed in something that has caused him some allergy and he apologizes for not being one hundred percent of his faculties". Even so, the singer dared with two fragments of Orlando Furioso that she tasted between the Autumn and Winter violin concertos.
But upon his return to the scene, and despite giving himself a second chance and trying to tackle "Gelido..." for the second time, Genaux announced with gestures and placing his hands around his neck that his performance ended there, since it would have been even more difficult to aria "Agitata da due venti", by Griselda, with which it was planned to end the evening. Pure baroque fireworks.
Instead, the Viennese Consort chose to repeat the Violin Concerto no. 2 Summer, that is, the most colorful Season and the one that had been most successful in the hands of the somewhat cold soloist, the Russian violinist Anna Morgoulets. Actually, the one that had sounded the best for this formation visibly specialized in Bach and for which Vivaldi is no less another world. Less spiritual. Nothing Lutheran.
On the other hand, on women's day, it was interesting that at the Bach Consort Wien they outnumbered the men: 9 against 3, or rather 4, counting the musical director. Its sound of a small baroque ensemble completely filled the Palau stage.
"It seems incredible that here you are going to receive the Berlin Philharmonic", the German music journalist was surprised in relation to the acoustics of the room, so loving with the baroque ensembles. The Spring Festival – a city commitment to attract quality tourism and position itself as the capital of classical art in a Europe with a mild climate – this year also attracts both foreign journalists specializing in architecture and travel publications.
And I know of the circumstance that the festival fully coincides in the calendar with the Dansa Metropolitana, as if both initiatives had agreed to turn Barcelona into a springtime explosion of dance, classical music and opera. This Thursday opens this appointment with the dance in which 12 municipalities of the metropolitan area already participate. The Portuguese choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira and the Brazilian Poliana Lima will occupy the Mercat de les Flors while the Liceu premieres Marina Abramovic's show 7 death of Maria Callas, second round of the Spring Festival. And the next day the Ciutat de clásica will be launched, the free offer of concerts in very different places in the city and open to all audiences.
