Yo, Dalí

Posted by Cristina Martí on May 30, 2011  |  1 Comment

On Wednesday 8 June at 8:00 pm, the world premiere of the opera “Yo, Dalí” will take place, to be followed by two further performances on 10 and 11 June at the same time. The work was composed by Xavier Benguerel with a libretto by Jaime Salom and commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Culture to commemorate, in 2004, the centenary of the birth of the Catalan painter Salvador Dalí. The score is published by Tritó Edicions.

The day before the premiere, on 7 June at 7:30 pm, the authors will speak at a conference moderated by Juan Ángel Vela del Campo.

The lead roles in “Yo, Dalí” will be played by Joan Martín-Royo, as Dalí, and Marisa Martins, as Gala. The rest of the cast is made up by Antoni Comas, Carlos Cremades, Vicenç Esteve Madrid, José Antonio García,  Xavier Mendoza, Hasmik Nahapetyan, Alex Sanmartí, Claudia Schneider and Mariano Viñuales, among others, accompanied by the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid and the Choir of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, under the baton of Antonio Fauró.
Miquel Ortega is responsible for the music direction and Xavier Abertí, the stage direction, in this co-production by Operadehoy, the Teatro de La Zarzuela and the Gran Teatro del Liceo.

For further information and tickets: Teatro de la Zarzuela

“Apocalipsis” in the Cuenca Religious Music Week

Posted by Cristina Martí on March 2, 2011  |  Leave a comment

On 17 April, Palm Sunday, the first public performance of the work Apocalipsis by Jesús Torres, commissioned for the 50^th Cuenca Religious Music Week, will take place at the Iglesia de la Merced in the said city. It will be the fourth of the twenty-two concerts programmed from the 16 to 24 of the coming month of April for a musical event now dating back half a century.

The composition is based on texts from the Apocalypse of St John in the New Testament and is intended to be performed by a Gregorian choir with seven members, two mixed choirs with twelve members each, seven percussionists, two pianos, two brass groups (two trumpets, two horns, two tenor trombones, two bass trombones) and one oboe. To this end it will count on to the most important Gregorian choir in Spain, Schola Antiqua, the French choir Accentus, and the Ensemble Residencias, all of them conducted by Nacho de Paz.

The work

While looking forward to the concert in order to discover this new composition by Jesus Torres, we can for the moment disclose that it lasts 49 minutes and consists of seven movements:

I. Vision; II. The seven seals; III. The seven trumpets; IV. The beast; V. Fall of Babylon; VI. The last judgement; VII. The new Jerusalem

The work of Jesús Torres has been published entirely by Editorial Tritó since 2002 and we expect it to be available in our shop in brief.

Now you know: if you live in Cuenca or are lucky enough to spend your Easter holidays there, don’t miss this concert or any of the others scheduled for the 50^th Cuenca Religious Music Week.

“El Caserío”, at the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao

Posted by Cristina Martí on January 21, 2011  |  Leave a comment

January 21 and 23 saw the first two of six performances of El Caserío by Jesús Guridi, something we already announced in the this blog a few weeks ago. The venue is the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao (Pza. Arriaga,1), at 20:00 hrs. The other performances will be held on the 25 (reduced prices), 26, 28 and 29 of this month.

The Work

Jesús Guridi Vidaola premiered “El Caserío” – a comic opera in three acts that Tritó plans to publish soon – on 11 November 1926 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid. Born in Vitoria he was, however, a musician particularly linked to Bilbao. In this city, at a very young age, he participated in the activities of the famous “El cuartito”, lived, worked and married there, and composed and premiered works such as Mirentxu and Amaya.

Not surprisingly he was a musician who had a deep emotional rapport with the people of Bilbao. Few people have not been moved when listening to Uncle Shanti singing Sasibil or have not smiled on seeing Inosensia netting a boyfriend with the business of “So says mother, Txomin, I have to get my act together.” Because although the libretto was written by a Spaniard from Oviedo with his roots in La Mancha, Federico Romero, and a native of Madrid, Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, El Caserío is inherently linked to the sentiments of the people of Bilbao and the history of this theatre. For this reason, the Teatro Arriaga has decided to once again stage the operetta. The stage direction is by the young actor and director Paul Viar Bilbao, set design by Daniel Bianco, and costumes by Jesus Ruiz. The Rossini Choir and the Bilbao Philharmonia, directed by Miquel Ortega, and the extraordinary cast, promise a new triumph for this delightful work.

Show credits
Music: Jesús Guridi
Libretto: Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández-Shaw
Music direction: Miquel Ortega
Stage direction: Pablo Viar
Set design: Daniel Bianco
Costume design: Jesús Ruiz
Performers: Ángel Ódena, Marta Ubieta, Mikeldi Atxalandabasolo, Itxaro Mentxaka, Alberto Núñez, Izaskun Kintana, Antonio Rupérez, Jon Ariño
Orchestra: Bilbao Philarmonia
Coro Rossini

This is a Teatro Arriaga production, coproduced by the Teatro Campoamor in Oviedo

For further information and tickets visit the Teatro Arriaga website.

Premiere of the musical Amadeu

Posted by Cristina Martí on January 20, 2011  |  2 Comments

Amadeo Vives (1871-1932) was one of the great zarzuela composers. The creator of Doña Francisquita, “Maruxa”, Bohemios and operettas such as La Generala was born in Barcelona and triumphed and died in Madrid. Albert Boadella pays tribute to him in Amadeu, a show that will be premiered at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid next Friday 21 January, with stage direction by Albert Boadella, and running until 13 February.

With Antoni Comas playing the role of Amadeo Vives, this “biting” musical, as described by Boadella, is woven from fragments of “Doña Francisquita”, “Bohemios”, “La generala” and “Maruxa”, together with coplas and erotic songs written in the composer’s youth, which will be performed by Yolanda Marín, Auxiliadora Toledano, Lola Casariego, Joana Thome, Israel Lozano and Francisco Corujo, accompanied by the Joven Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid under the baton of Miguel Roa and Manuel Coves.

Plot

A Barcelona newspaper commissions a young journalist, who is a fan of hard rock, to write an article about the great zarzuela composer Amadeo Vives. The young journalist’s exploration of the life of the famous Catalan musician, whom he didn’t even know existed, prompts him to imagine the life and work of Vives in reality. In a plot that move to and fro between dramatic and humoristic, excerpts from zarzuelas such as Doña Francisquita, Bohemios, Maruxa and La Generala are presented, as well as coplas and erotic songs written in the composer’s youth. As his imaginary relationship with Vives grows deeper, the young journalist who was previously so keen on hard rock reviews his ideas on art, life and politics.

For further information see the Teatros del Canal website

Ara Malikian presents his latest CD

Posted by Marcel Soleda on November 23, 2010  |  Leave a comment

Following the magnificent reception given to his latest recording by both the critics and the public, Ara Malikian now presents the CD “Spanish Romantic Violin Concertos” at the FNAC in Valencia.

The CD includes two extraordinary violin concertos by the composers Tomás Bretón and Jesús de Monasterio, concertos composed in the shadow of Pablo Sarasate. The two works are also very good examples of the influence of Central European symphonism in Spain. This is the first time these concertos have been recorded.

You can listen to them here…

For further information see: www.fnac.com and www.laguiago.com

Casablancas debuts “Dove of Peace”, homage to Picasso

Posted by Toni Cruanyes on May 19, 2010  |  Leave a comment

Dove of Peace. Homage to Picasso Hill will be premiered on 19 May at the Cornerstone, Hope Everton, Great Hall of Liverpool, by the clarinettist Nicholas Cox and the Ensemble 10/10 under the baton of Clark Rundell.

This work, which is his chamber concerto nº 1 for clarinet and chamber orchestra, is fruit of a commission from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The fact that the date of the premiere coincided with the celebration of a major exhibition devoted to Picasso at the Tate Liverpool prompted the composer to envisage his work as a homage to the much-admired Spanish artist.

With this piece, the author once again explores one of his passions, which has become a constant in his oeuvre, and this is the dialogue with other artistic languages, poetry and literature, and especially painting, whose echo we can recognize in pieces like Alter Klang, Impromptu for orchestra after poems by Paul Klee (2006) or Four Darks in Red, based on the work of Rothko, and recently premiered in New York..

This work is Casablancas’ first incursion into the concertante genre.

Sincrotró-Alba: The premiere of the third symphony by Joan Guinjoan

Posted by Toni Cruanyes on May 5, 2010  |  1 Comment

On Friday 7 May, the expected premiere of Sincrotró-Alba, the third symphony by Joan Guinjoan, will take place. The work, organised into three movements, is fruit of a commission from the Synchrotron Consortium, whose particle accelerator in Cerdanyola del Vallès was inaugurated on 22 March, and who wish to celebrate its activation with an orchestral work inspired in the monumental scientific laboratory called Alba, which means ‘dawn’, a direct allusion to the first light of the morning, which dispels the darkness and unveils the landscape of a new day.

The programme, performed by the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC) under the baton of Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, will be opened by the work The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, and will conclude with Rachmaninov’s popular second piano concerto.

Sincrotró-Alba is the most important piece composed by Joan Guinjoan in the last few years.

Premiere of Hypermusic Prologue, by Hèctor Parra

Posted by Marcel Soleda on June 11, 2009  |  Leave a comment

Sunday 14 June saw the premiere of “Hypermusic Prologue, a projective opera in seven planes” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a work by the composer Hèctor Parra with a libretto by the well-known professor of theoretical physics from Harvard University, Lisa Randall.

It is new style of opera, a unique project for intercommunication between science, music and art. In this work the traditional form of opera is explored to generate a form of dramatic expression suited to the 21st century, its ideas and creative processes, including recent research into physics and its parallelisms with music and art.

Hypermusic Prologue was commissioned by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), the Centre Pompidou itself, and the Department of Culture of the Catalan Government.

The same production will be presented at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona on 27 and 28 de November.

Information about its premiere on the Catalan Television…

Hèctor Parra in the newspaper El País

Posted by Marcel Soleda on June 10, 2009  |  Leave a comment

The journalist Javier Pérez Senz has interviewed Hèctor Parra in the Babelia section of El País (6 June). The composer discussed his projective opera “Hypermusic Prologue“, his complex creative process, and his relationship with the American theoretical physicist Lisa Randall. He also mentioned how proud he feels to have been able to work on such a project with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

“What I aim for as a creator is to move the listeners, stir their spirits and open up their imaginations to new sound energies in the awareness that, in a nutshell, composing is searching for oneself”.

A face-to-face encounter with the composer that preluded the première, which took place on 14 June at the Centre Pompidou in the French capital.

Link to the interview.

Opera 2.0 (3rd part)

Posted by Marcel Soleda on June 8, 2009  |  Leave a comment

In the last video of the series, the theoretical physicist and Harvard professor Lisa Randall, author of the libretto, talks about Hypermusic Prologue. The idea for the libretto came from one of her best-known books, “Warped passages” which was a best seller in the United States.

In Hypermusic Prologue, science, music and plastic arts find a meeting point in this innovative score, whose central character is a composer-scientist (soprano) torn between the love she feels for her partner (baritone) and her passion for research, her conviction that there is a much bigger world than we know waiting to be explored.