The Peralada Festival has taken seriously the idea of giving continuity to the services of darkness every Good Friday and has commissioned a responsory to the contemporary Catalan composer who shows the most affinities with early music. Joan Magrané from Reus will thus premiere Tenebrae Responsoria (Feria sexta in Parasceve) at the Carmel church on March 29, 2024. It will be in the 2nd Easter edition of the Empordà festival, from March 28 to 30. The artistic director of the competition, Oriol Aguilà, has also announced that the choir and orchestra of the Opéra Royal de Versailles will perform a Charpentier program under the direction of Chloé de Guillebon.
Magrané, for his part, has revealed his influences: "Couperin for both solo voices (two sopranos, here converted into a soprano and a cello) and Gesualdo for the choice of texts", explained the festival.
"It's been a few years since I've been thinking about putting music on the responsories on Holy Thursday, Friday and Saturday, or doing it only on one of the three nights". The definitive form would have come to him through the crossing of ideas between the musical director Francesc Prat and the cellist Pau Codina. It was about imagining a work of a dimension that would be suitable for a concert and that would fuse vocal and instrumental music, "a path I've been trying to take for some time", adds Magrané. The soprano María Hinojosa and the GIO Symphonia quickly added to this idea of putting music to some of the texts of the Lessons of Darkness on Good Friday.
The Peralada Festival closed on Saturday a 37th edition, intense and concentrated in a few dates, which has allowed it, in the words of Aguilà, "to maintain the pulse and the links with the public and the artists", while building the longed-for new auditorium In an intimate and medium format (with a capacity of 240 seats in the Carmel church and 290 in the Mirador), the festival has sold out all tickets. And he has done so by discovering new figures in the lyrical field – the tenors Freddie de Tommaso, Jonathan Tetelman and Jonah Hoskins –, experiencing exciting moments with the return of Jordi Savall or the soprano Diana Damrau, and celebrating tributes to Victòria dels Angels, with the soprano Núria Rial and the pianist Rubén Fernández (radio Clàssica de RNE), and also the critic Roger Alier, with the final recital by Serena Sáenz and Jonah Hoskins. He has also delved into Menotti's chamber operas with The Telephone and has given carte blanche to the Capella Mediterranea.
In the new section Ex Ex (Exceptional Experiences) we enjoyed the composer Héctor Parra and the pianist Imma Santacreu, and the open rehearsal of Alba, by the dancer and choreographer Aimar Pérez Galí. In addition, 16 sanguines by Parra were shown at the La lingua del corpo exhibition, inspired by the composition of his new opera Orgia, which will arrive at the Liceu in April 2024.
