The Palau de la Música Catalana will celebrate the centenary of Victoria de los Ángeles next season with two concerts that, in short, make up a spectacular musical recipe to vindicate the memory of the legendary Catalan soprano. Both are included in the Great Voices cycle of the modernist hall which, on the other hand, will once again bring prominent opera figures to the city such as Philippe Jaroussky (with little-known works from the late Baroque together with Le Concert de la Loge, which perhaps it will be the last thing he sings before dedicating himself fully to conducting) or Javier Camarena in a recital, which will thus recover contact with the Barcelona public after his unexpected cancellation of the imminent Manon del Liceu.
The soprano Ermonela Jaho, much loved by the high school public and by those who attend the musical summer of the Peralada Festival, will make her debut at the Palau with the mission of bringing Victoria de los Ángeles back to life. Something that the Albanian singer will carry out together with the Franz Schubert Filharmonia, in a concert that will include great Puccinian arias -from Madama Butterfly, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Turandot and La bohème-, some of which the late diva defended on stage throughout his career. But she will also take part in the premiere of a symphony that the Tarragona orchestra directed by Tomàs Grau has commissioned Albert Guinovart for the occasion -the first to his credit- and whose score will include a human voice.
"I already had the desire to pay homage to Victoria, whom I accompanied for a decade in more than a hundred concerts and to whom I owe great teaching, not only as a pianist but also as a creator, because she transmitted to me all that musical wisdom she had" Guinovart points out. "And it was doing a private concert with Ermonela that I discovered in her a person with a simplicity and dedication to music that reminded me of Victoria. And besides, she is in love with Victoria, so she put all the facilities in it."
Grau was in charge of balancing the very busy schedule of the Albanian singer, whose interpretation of Suor Angelica at the Liceu this season reaffirmed her reputation as an emotionally dedicated and honest interpreter. Regarding the details of the music of this symphony that he will be in charge of premiering, Guinovart assures that it will be a surprise, "but hey, it's about paying homage to Victoria through some emblematic music that she sang and that remind us of her, and that I will develop symphonically", he adds.
On the other hand, Guinovart himself will sit down at the piano to give a recital with the other side of the Victoria de los Ángeles repertoire, that of the Catalan songbook. Along with him, in addition to arias from the Italian repertoire, the young and already international soprano from Ribera d'Ebre Sara Blanch will perform it, who becomes the first singer from the territory that the Palau includes in its Grandes Voces cycle, which will now reach its ninth edition. "We are very excited, because Sara Blanch is also someone who sang for a long time in the Cor Jove del Orfeó Català", pointed out the general director of the hall, Joan Oller.
In this variety that characterizes the Grans Veus cycle, which combines established stars and young voices, as well as opera singers, liederistas or specialized in early music, the magnetic countertenor and pop icon (he is a break dancer) Jakub Józef Orlinski completes the program , which next week will open the first Easter edition of Peralada, and Katharina Konradi, one of the great bets of the Schubertíada de Vilabertran who co-produces this recital.
"Since 2018 we have already done eight recitals with her in Spain, four of them in Vilabertran, for whose audience she is officially the queen of the festival," says Víctor Medem, director of the Ampurdan musical event and of the Franz Schubert Association, who recalls that This soprano from Kyrgyzstan is about to make her debut at the Vienna Opera and at the Met in New York.
"His high register stands out, of incredible beauty -explains Medem-, and that peculiar timbre that is recognizable at first glance, as well as his facility for singing and his talent for languages". The program that Konradi performs is also designed, together with the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation, to contribute to the centenary celebration: Fauré, Schubert, Obradors... composers that the Catalan soprano regularly did.
With regard to the opera cycle, next season the Palau will have three concert version baroques, the first of which will bring to Barcelona the young countertenor Carlo Vistoli and the Hungarian soprano Emoke Baráth, together with the French ensemble Les Accents led by the concertmaster of Les Musiciens du Louvre, in Handel's Rinaldo. Another great figure of the baroque will be the soprano Jeanine de Bique, who with The English Concert directed by the very notorious Harry Bicket, will star in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, the third and last of the three surviving titles of the father of opera and that the Palau has presented in this cycle.
"In three editions we have presented his three most important titles, starting with L'Orfeo and continuing with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and this last one that is preserved from him and that is the first opera whose central theme is not a story mythological but a true story, inspired by the love story of Nero and Poppea. Let's remember that it was in a fire in the library where his scores were kept in Venice that deprived us of a large part of his musical heritage", recalls Mercedes Conde, Associate Artistic Director of the Palau.
Apart from Rinaldo, there will be another Händel opera in a concert version, with the most celebrated countertenor of today, Franco Fagioli, giving life to Tolomeo, re d'Egitto. A co-production of Il Giardino Armonico and the Kammerorchester Basel directed by Giovanni Antonini of this mature opera, which is the first that the German composer wrote in Italian for a London theater, although 29 years had passed since his Rinaldo.
