Natalia Labourdette, Laurence Kilsby, and Kunal Lahiry Present a Recital Celebrating the Centenary of Victoria de los Ángeles

Siobhan Stagg, Miah Persson, and Joseph Middleton Will Also Participate in the First Week of the Festival

The LIFE Victoria 2023-24 opens tomorrow (Sant Pau Modernist Site, 8 PM) with a recital by soprano Natalia Labourdette and tenor Laurence Kilsby alongside pianist Kunal Lahiry, following which baritone Milan Perišić and pianist Quimey Urquiaga will participate as LIFE New Artists. The LIFE Victoria thus inaugurates the edition commemorating the centenary of Victoria de los Ángeles, doing so by championing young talent, one of the Foundation’s core objectives. “Since the Foundation’s inception in 2007, scholarships, training, and support for young talents have been a priority, and we wanted to begin this centenary edition in such a special way,” according to Helena Mora, President of the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation.

Tomorrow’s recital brings together three emerging names who are consolidating their presence on the international scene. Natalia Labourdette participated as a LIFE New Artist in 2017 and recently debuted in Le nozze di Figaro at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville and at the Liceu as Valetto in L’incoronazione di Poppea. Laurence Kilsby, for his part, has won first prizes in the world’s leading Lied competitions: “Das Lied” Competition 2023, Heidelberger Frühling Festspiele, Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition 2022, and Cesti Competition 2022 at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik. Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry appears in major venues worldwide, such as Wigmore Hall, Kennedy Center, Pierre Boulez Saal, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and Carnegie Hall, and has conducted numerous studies for which he has received scholarships, for example, exploring the queer influence in classical music. Lahiry and Labourdette are also resident artists for the current edition of the Festival.

Together, they perform the program Five Centuries of Song, a tribute to Victoria de los Ángeles on the occasion of her centenary, and to the way the artist interpreted songs without distinction between popular and classical, covering five hundred years of music. “Few vocal performers in the history of music have interpreted five centuries of music and done so, moreover, with taste and rigor, as Victoria did,” says Marc Busquets, artistic director of the Festival. “Her beginnings in the musical group Ars Musicae introduced her to the world of early music, laying solid foundations for an undeniable development of her career.” The program includes pieces by José Palomino, Henry Purcell, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, and Gabriel Fauré.

The Festival continues this week with the debut of soprano Siobhan Stagg alongside Kunal Lahiry, who will approach Victoria de los Ángeles through the chants et mélodies she sang (Friday, October 6, Sant Pau Modernist Site, 8 PM), and with the debut of soprano Miah Persson alongside Joseph Middleton, who offer a sophisticated program centered on the Countess Almaviva, a character with whom Victoria de los Ángeles debuted at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 1945 (Monday, October 10, Sant Pau Modernist Site, 8 PM).

Victoria, from another perspective

With the guiding theme ‘Possible and Impossible Dialogues with Victoria de los Ángeles’, LIFE Victoria will offer more than forty recitals and concerts to celebrate the Centenary of Victoria de los Ángeles. Frequent names of the Festival such as Dame Sarah Connolly, Simon Keenlyside, Dame Felicity Lott, Iréne Theorin, Adriana González, Marina Viotti, Julius Drake, Fleur Barron, Malcolm Martineau, Tara Erraught or Kunal Lahiry, are joined by the debuts of Natalie Dessay, Elsa Dreisig, Julie Fuchs, Roger Vignoles, Golda Schultz or Philippe Cassard alongside national artists such as Elena Coponos, Xavier Sabata, Núria Rial, José Antonio López, Ofelia Sala, Carles Pachón, Mercedes Gancedo, Natalia Labourdette, Marta Puig or Albert Guinovart, among many others.

The program has been designed based on an interview given by the soprano in 1978 on the BBC program Desert Island Discs with journalist Roy Plomley, where Victoria chose the records she would take to a desert island. Thus, throughout this recital season, a series of possible and impossible dialogues with Victoria were proposed: the former encompass everything she sang and left to the world as a universal legacy, such as Schubert, Debussy, or Falla, as well as Manon, Carmen, or Faust; and the latter comprise everything she did not perform but which is intrinsically present in her interpretations because it forms part of her artistic personality: Tristan und Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, or the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation Press

+34 93 742 21 68 I +34 659 02 96 71 I prensa@victoriadelosangeles.org