A victorious closing for the LIFE Victoria 'Centenary Edition'
October 2024
- The Victoria de los Ángeles Lied Festival (LIFE Victoria) has concluded its season this week, dedicated to commemorating the centenary of the great Catalan soprano.
- Soprano Ofelia Sala and pianist Julius Drake were responsible for bringing this edition of the festival to a close with a recital at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site last Monday, October 21.
- Between September 2023 and October 2024, LIFE Victoria has presented more than 40 recitals by top-level national and international voices who joined together to celebrate the legacy of Victoria de los Ángeles.
- The Festival will return in February 2025 with an interim edition that will run until June, leading into a 2025-26 season spanning from September to May.
Barcelona, October 23, 2024. LIFE Victoria has culminated its centenary edition this week, dedicated to celebrating the life and legacy of Victoria de los Ángeles for an entire year.
With more than 40 recitals and more than one hundred artists on stage, LIFE Victoria has concluded victoriously a cycle featuring world-renowned voices such as Felicity Lott, Natalie Dessay, Julie Fuchs, Elena Pankratova, Adriana González, or Marina Viotti; top-level national artists like Xavier Sabata, Ofelia Sala, Montserrat Seró, or Mercedes Gancedo; as well as emerging new talents from around the world such as Natalia Labourdette, Kunal Lahiry, Laurence Kilsby, or Valerie Eickhoff, who joined this great tribute to the Catalan soprano.
This edition has been dedicated to possible and impossible dialogues with Victoria de los Ángeles, based on an interview the soprano gave to the BBC program Desert Island Discs in 1978, where she chose the records she would take to a desert island. Among those she selected are works by Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande and Images), Mozart (Violin Concerto), as well as great operas such as Tristan und Isolde, performed by Kirsten Flagstad, or Carmen, by Conchita Supervía.
“It has undoubtedly been the most ambitious edition of the Festival with the most major names, but the occasion of Victoria’s centenary certainly deserved it” – Marc Busquets
The task of putting the finishing touch on this musical celebration fell to the Valencian soprano Ofelia Sala and the British pianist Julius Drake, who offered a deeply symbolic recital on October 21, as Sala was also the first voice to pay tribute to Victoria after her death in 2005.
The Victoria de los Ángeles Symphony Orchestra Quartet also participated in the closing recital, composed of Laia Pujolassos (violin), Maria del Mar Aldomà (violin), Patricia Torres (viola), and Eduard Raventós (cello).
In the words of Marc Busquets, artistic director of LIFE Victoria, “We are very satisfied with the result of this edition because I believe we have succeeded in making the public know Victoria better through her musical tastes, and this was one of the objectives of the centenary.”
Busquets also highlighted that “this year we have continued with the policy of format innovation that we have been carrying out at the Festival for some time, offering staged recitals such as Mild und Leise with Elena Pankratova and Josep Breinl, or poetic recitals centered on Rilke’s texts in dialogue with the music of Schubert and Bach; a line that we will undoubtedly promote in future editions of the Festival.”
This edition also stands out for its great public reception, with an average hall occupancy of 95% throughout the year.
In this way, LIFE Victoria bids farewell to its programming in style to return in February 2025 with an interim edition until June and a 2025-26 season —from September 2025 to May 2026— which will bring pleasant surprises to the world of lied and will continue to spread the legacy of Victoria de los Ángeles and support future generations of singers, following the soprano’s example, as stated in the Foundation’s own mission.
