‘Possible and impossible dialogues with Victoria de los Ángeles’ will be the common thread of this double edition

The Festival extends throughout the year to mark the Centenary

With the common thread ‘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, as presented today (12:00 PM) at a press conference at the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista. 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 along with national artists such as Elena Copons, Xavier Sabata, Núria Rial, José Antonio López, Ofelia Sala, Carles Pachón, Mercedes Gancedo, Natalia Labourdette, Marta Puig or Albert Guinovart, among many others.

This year, the Festival moves away from seasonality and will extend throughout 2023 and 2024 in commemoration of the Centenary of the Catalan soprano. An anniversary that has been declared Victoria de los Ángeles Year by the Generalitat de Catalunya and an Event of Exceptional Public Interest by the Government of Spain. The year will be inaugurated on November 1, 2023, the exact date of the Centenary, with a concert at the Paraninf of the University of Barcelona featuring Elena Copons and the Victoria de los Ángeles Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pedro Pardo.

Victoria, from another perspective

The programming has been designed around the ‘Possible and impossible dialogues with Victoria de los Ángeles’, based on an interview given by the soprano in 1978 on the BBC program Desert Island Discs with journalist Roy Plomley, where Victoria chooses the records she would take to a desert island. Thus, through this season of recitals, a series of possible and impossible dialogues with Victoria are proposed: the former include 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 they are part of her artistic personality: Tristan und Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, or the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke.

“What makes up an artist’s artistic imaginary? Not what they perform—or not only that—but also what forms, influences, and inspires them so that the most elevated and sublime thing can occur: creation?” asks Marc Busquets, artistic director of the Festival and curator of the Victoria de los Ángeles Year for the Generalitat, adding: “In the centenary of Victoria de los Ángeles at LIFE Victoria, we want to explore precisely that: What did Victoria de los Ángeles listen to? What did she read? How did she herself experience the interpretations she gave night after night to the audience that accompanied her and which have become so immortal that on her centenary we still remember them so vividly?”

“During this year, tributes to Victoria will follow one another, dedicating many Bohème and Madama Butterfly to her, which we love, but from the Foundation we believe we have the obligation to continue spreading Victoria’s legacy so that she is better known, and with this LIFE Victoria programming, this year we will all know her better,” according to Helena Mora, president of the Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation.

Support for young talent

The support for young talent and training continues to be present as one of the pillars of the Festival and the Foundation through the LIFE New Artists (young duets offering a twenty-minute recital before the main recitals), formative talks, and masterclasses (this year with Dame Felicity Lott, Roger Vignoles, and Sholto Kynoch). “It would make no sense to do all this if we did not support young talent, which is the reason why Victoria wanted the Foundation to be created,” according to Helena Mora. In this line, the recital of the winner of the Victoria de los Ángeles Prize of the Tenor Viñas Contest, the mezzo-soprano Valerie Eickhoff together with Harmut Höll (May 21, 2024), will also be offered, as well as the Spanish debut of Katy Thomson and Rustan Khanmurzin (November 10, 2023), as part of the collaboration with the Oxford International Song Festival, where RunZhe Li and Mar Compte will debut this year and where Mercedes Gancedo will return together with Sholto Kynoch (Oxford, October 25, 2023) with dramaturgy and costumes by Marc Busquets for Granados’s Goyescas songs. The OISF is an International Partner of LIFE Victoria. James Newby, ECHO Rising Star, participates in the Festival in a recital organized by the Palau de la Música Catalana together with Joseph Middleton (Petit Palau, November 20, 2023), and Ferran Albrich offers Winterreise together with David Malet (Palau Güell, December 14 and 15, 2023).

Brilliant debuts by great sopranos

The legendary soprano Natalie Dessay will debut at the Festival together with Philippe Cassard (Auditori Axa, March 5, 2024), as will sopranos Julie Fuchs with Alphonse Cemin (April 16, 2024) and Elsa Dreisig with Romain Louveau (January 23, 2024). Miah Persson, a great Mozartian, will offer a program centered on the Countess Almaviva, together with Joseph Middleton (October 10, 2023); for her part, Golda Schultz has created a program around the relationship between Victoria and Marian Anderson together with Gary Matthewmann (October 15, 2024).

Siobhan Stagg will also debut together with Kunal Lahiry exploring Victoria’s mélodies (October 6, 2023), and Núria Rial, who had not yet debuted at LIFE Victoria, will do so together with Rubén Fernández Aguirre to offer the program Cantar del alma, specifically created for the Centenary (October 22, 2023). Natalia Labourdette, this year’s resident artist, will be in charge of inaugurating the 2023 edition together with tenor Laurence Kilsby and Kunal Lahiry, also this year’s resident pianist (October 3, 2023), as well as celebrating the centenary of Antoni Tàpies, a friend of Victoria, together with the wind quartet SenArts, winner of the Xavier Montsalvatge Prize of the Les Corts Competition (Fundació Tàpies, September 20, 2024). The soprano Alexandra Nowakowski will debut together with Michal Biel (October 22, 2023), in her return to the Festival.

Great names regular at LIFE Victoria

Dame Sarah Connolly will be present during this Centenary LIFE Victoria, first at the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista (November 10, 2023) and then debuting at the Espacio Turina in Seville (November 25, 2023), on both occasions together with Joseph Middleton. She will return the following autumn to offer a recital for the first time together with Iréne Theorin and Julius Drake. Adriana González will return to the Festival in a duet with Marina Viotti together with Iñaki Encina Oyón (February 11, 2023), and Viotti will offer a solo recital at the Mirador de la Torre Glòries, a new venue for the Festival, together with Gabriel Bianco on guitar (April 22). Baritone Simon Keenlyside returns to LIFE Victoria to offer Schubert’s Winterreise together with Roger Vignoles (Auditori Axa, November 18, 2023), and countertenor Xavier Sabata will debut at the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista after his tour also with Winterreise by Rafael R. Villalobos offered in 2021, this time together with Anne Le Bozec (May 27, 2024). Baritone José Antonio López returns after his debut in 2016, now together with Daniel Heide (February 5, 2024), and Fleur Barron returns to the Festival together with a quintet formed by another of this year’s resident artists, Marta Puig; together they will perform Schubert’s Forellenquintet and Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder (October 10, 2023). Also returning is mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught together with Joseph Middleton, who will offer the tribute program to Victoria de los Ángeles that they will also perform at London’s Wigmore Hall on the occasion of the Centenary (October 16, 2023). Soprano Ofelia Sala, who inaugurated the first edition of LIFE Victoria back in 2012, will close the concert program together with Julius Drake (October 21, 2024).

Special stage projects

In collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya, ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ will be offered, a silent film directed by Robert Weine with music by Richard Strauss himself, which premiered in 1926 at the Dresden Semperoper under Strauss’s musical direction, following the success of the opera of the same name in 1911. “The Knight of the Rose appears frequently in Victoria de los Ángeles’s correspondence, though she never sang the opera. Thus, at the beginning of her career, she was offered Octavian at the Liceu, and in a heartfelt letter from Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the latter confesses that she could never sing Mimì like her and how lucky it was that she had not sung the Marschallin,” says Busquets, adding: “not for nothing, Victoria de los Ángeles premiered in Italy Ariadne auf Naxos, in 1949, and Strauss is very present in the early stages of her career.” The silent film will feature live music by Strauss performed by the Victoria de los Ángeles Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pedro Pardo (Filmoteca, May 9, 2024).

French director Vincent Huguet continues his residency at the Festival, where he will inaugurate 2024 with a staged vision of the Rückert-Lieder, the Wesendonck Lieder, and the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. It will take place on September 26, 2024, at Sant Pau with soprano Anne Schwanewilms and Malcolm Martineau on piano. Huguet is also in charge of stage directing the Victoria de los Ángeles Centenary Gala, which will take place at the Liceu on November 7, 2023.

Actor Josep Maria Flotats debuts at the Festival together with Marta Puig to offer fragments of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, as well as Letters to a Young Poet, which is the book Victoria de los Ángeles would take to a desert island. For their part, Mercedes Gancedo and Sholto Kynoch offer a vision of Granados’s Goyescas songs, with dramaturgy and costumes by Marc Busquets.

Catalan song with orchestra touring Catalonia

Victoria de los Ángeles was a great advocate of Catalan song. Thus, in collaboration with the institution, a symphonic concert of Catalan song will be offered at the Palau de la Música Catalana with some of the talents emerged from the Foundation such as Mercedes Gancedo, Irene Mas Salom, Montserrat Seró, and Carles Pachón with the Victoria de los Ángeles Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pedro Pardo (Palau de la Música Catalana, January 16, 2024). This concert will go on tour through Catalonia: L’Atlàntida in Vic (January 12, 2024), El Celler in Vilaseca (January 13, 2024), Teatre Auditori in Sant Cugat del Vallès (October 26, 2024), and Kursaal in Manresa (October 27, 2024).

Piano dedicated to Alicia de Larrocha on the occasion of her Centenary

The LIFE Piano cycle incorporates the name of the celebrated pianist Alicia de Larrocha, a great friend of Victoria. Thus, the LIFE Piano Alicia de Larrocha cycle will feature piano recitals by Albert Guinovart (February 11, 2024), Marta Puig (April 16, 2024), and Kunal Lahiry (October 15). Additionally, two Lied Tastings (35 minutes of Lied, with gastronomic pairing) will be offered at Jorquera Pianos (January 24 and February 21, 2024).

*All recitals where the venue is not specified take place at the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista

Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation Press

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