Barcelona, July 10, 2024.– Correos today presented the postage stamps from the Music series dedicated to soprano Victoria de los Ángeles and pianist Alicia de Larrocha, at an event held at the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista in Barcelona.

The event was attended by Alicia Torra de Larrocha, commissioner of the Alicia de Larrocha Centenary commemoration; Helena Mora, president of the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation; Marc Busquets, commissioner of the Victoria de los Ángeles Year; Sonnia L. Rivas-Caballero, director of the cultural company Rocaviva Eventos; and Nuria Lera, director of Philately and Institutional Relations at Correos.

At the end of the event, the traditional honorary stamp cancellation took place, followed by a recital of Granados’s songs by soprano Mercedes Gancedo and pianist Quimey Urquiaga.

These are two stamps featuring the images of Victoria de los Ángeles and Alicia de Larrocha, with a piano and a fragment of the score of “La maja de Goya” by Enrique Granados, one of the most important composers for both.

Correos has issued a print run of 117,000 stamps in this series dedicated to the memory of the two great Catalan artists, which can be purchased at post offices, through Correos Market, or by contacting the philatelic service. Each stamp has a value of €2.17.

Helena Mora, president of the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation, highlighted that “it is a beautiful tribute that symbolically unites two friends, women, and great artists like Victoria de los Ángeles and Alicia de Larrocha with this stamp. Furthermore, a melody by Granados, ‘La maja de Goya,’ connects the two stamps, nodding to this composer who was so important to both. Alicia and Victoria made Victoria’s first recording together – the record that was the prize for the first competition the soprano won at Radio Barcelona in 1940 – and also the last, Toldrà’s ‘La cançó de comiat,’ in 2000”.

Alicia and Victoria

Alicia de Larrocha (Barcelona, May 23, 1923 – September 25, 2009) and Victoria de los Ángeles (Barcelona, November 1, 1923 – January 15, 2005) are two great international artists who shared an innate passion for music.

They met in 1941, when Victoria won the Radio Barcelona prize and chose Alicia as her accompanying pianist for the recording that came with the award. This forged a mutual admiration and a lifelong friendship.

Victoria de los Ángeles, a marvelous spinto soprano, shone on the world’s most important stages. Her recitals of German Lied and French, Catalan, and Spanish song are iconic, and she starred in the most demanding operas by Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, Mozart, Bizet, Offenbach, Massenet… Her most endearing role was Mimì, from La Bohème, with which she achieved a record of over three million copies sold of a complete opera. She was invited twice by Wagner’s grandson, being the only Spanish soprano to have sung at the Bayreuth Festival.

Alicia de Larrocha represents the pinnacle of global pianism. At the age of five, she gave her first concert, where composer Joaquín Turina praised her prodigious and precocious musical talent. She achieved international fame after a successful tour of the United States with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, eventually giving nearly 4,000 concerts throughout her life. She was an excellent interpreter of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Ravel. Her recordings of Albéniz’s Suite Iberia (Grand Prix du Disque) and Granados’s Goyescas (Grammy Award) are considered undisputed benchmarks by professionals and music lovers.

Among many other accolades, both received the National Music Award, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, the Gold Medal of the Spanish Institute of New York, and the Gold Medal of Barcelona.