The Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation presents the season rentrée with Elena Pankratova and Joseph Breinl

October 2024
  • The Centenary Edition of LIFE Victoria resumes its programming this September 30 with a staged recital by Elena Pankratova, Joseph Breinl, and the scenic concept of Marc Busquets at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site.
  • The program will be dedicated to Wagner, one of Victoria de los Ángeles’ favorite composers, of whom Elena Pankratova is an outstanding interpreter.
  • For this occasion, “Fusta pintada i rascada” by Antoni Tàpies will be exhibited, a painting that belonged to Victoria de los Ángeles and which will commemorate the deep friendship between the soprano and the artist on the centenary of both their births.
  • At the end of the recital, a cocktail will be offered courtesy of Juvé & Camps.

The LIFE Victoria continues its Centenary Edition programming on September 30 at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, with a highly anticipated staged recital by one of the great Wagnerians of the moment, the Russian soprano Elena Pankratova, together with the renowned German pianist Joseph Breinl.

The program, dedicated to Mahler and Wagner, is inspired by Victoria de los Ángeles‘ fascination with the Wagnerian repertoire, especially Tristan und Isolde. “Every time I go to the theater, I cry from beginning to end because of this great love between the two lovers,” Victoria used to say, and that is why, without hesitation, the soprano chose this title as the recording she would take to a desert island on the legendary BBC program Desert Island Discs, in which she participated in 1978.

Pankratova and Breinl will perform the climactic finale of Tristan und Isolde, ‘Liebestod: Mild und Leise’, as well as the five songs of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder.

The scenic proposal designed by Marc Busquets for this recital seeks to create a Wagnerian salon atmosphere, inspired by Richard and Cosima Wagner’s house in Bayreuth, which will further enhance the Art Nouveau style of the Sala Domènech i Montaner at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site.

Victoria de los Ángeles is—even today—the only Spanish singer to have performed at the Bayreuth Festival, where she played the role of Elisabeth in Tannhäuser under the baton of Wieland Wagner, the composer’s grandson. At the same time, Elena Pankratova is the only Russian soprano to have participated in the legendary festival on the Green Hill, making this rentrée of LIFE Victoria a double evocation—to Victoria and Wagner—remembering the soprano through the music she loved most and which brought her to one of the peaks of her career. For this occasion, the work ‘Fusta pintada i rascada’ (1960) by Antoni Tàpies will also be exhibited, one of the painter’s works that belonged to Victoria de los Ángeles and which will commemorate the deep friendship between the soprano and the artist on the centenary of both their births. Tàpies also had a close relationship with Wagner’s music, present in some of his works, and therefore this recital centered around Tristan und Isolde is the perfect occasion to continue remembering him.

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Victoria de los Ángeles Foundation
University of Barcelona | Historic Building
Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585
08007 Barcelona

+34 937 422 168​ | info@victoriadelosangeles.org

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