Redemptio: New season of Les Arts

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by Opera Charm Team

May 31, 2024

Season 2024-2025

With Willy Decker, Robert Carsen, Àlex Ollé, Vincent Huguet and Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier on stage, and Gaffigan, Jacobs, Christie, Gimeno, Elder, Hengelbrock, Minasi and García Alarcón on the podium.

Debuts Anna Netrebko, Asmik Grigorian, Charles Castronovo and returns Juan Diego Flórez, Lissete Oropesa, Joyce DiDonato, Sondra Radvanovsky, Michael Fabiano, Ekaterina Semenchuk and Piotr Beczała.

The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía is adding 10 new titles to its lyric repertoire in its 19th season, a journey through 417 years of music history, from Monteverdi’s ‘L’Orfeo’ (1607) to the premiere of Francisco Coll’s ‘City Without Sleep’ (2024) in London.

The regional secretary for Culture and Sport, Paula Añó, today presided over the press conference presentation of the 2024-2025 Season of the Valencian arts centre, accompanied by the president of the Patronato de Les Arts, Pablo Font de Mora, and its artistic director, Jesús Iglesias Noriega.

Añó highlighted ‘the most ambitious commitment of Les Arts to date’, which brings together the leading figures of the scene in a diverse offering that consolidates València and the Valencian Community as a cultural centre of reference.

‘This is what the 2024-2025 Season of Les Arts will be like: 11 opera and zarzuela shows, five dance performances, seven powerful symphonic programmes, five evenings of “Lied”, three concerts of the greatest divos, five Baroque sessions, five representatives of the most current Valencian music, six nights of the best flamenco and a wide range of events for everyone’, Añó pointed out.

For his part, the President of the Board of Trustees Pablo Font de Mora thanked the support of the Generalitat Valenciana and, specifically, of the First Vice-Presidency and Regional Ministry of Culture, for the project that civil society promoted for Les Arts in 2018, whose results not only artistic, but also in terms of spectators, visibility, attracting sponsorship, patronage and acceptance are ‘as our guiding thread for this season, “Redemptio”, says, the best way to return to the Valencians all that they contribute to Les Arts’.

In this sense, Iglesias Noriega pointed out that, in keeping with the term ‘Redemptio’, Les Arts is advocating, for yet another year, to begin its season outside its headquarters, in a tour of the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana (OCV), which with its conductor James Gaffigan, will visit the Festival de Pollença on August 30th.

A few days later, on September 5th, the OCV, with Javier Perianes, will perform at the Festival Otoño Musical Soriano. And finally, Les Arts’ main ensemble and James Gaffigan will star in two evenings in Llíria and Cullera (September 13th and 14th), as a prologue to the Open Doors Day on September 15th, which marks the beginning of the activity in the Calatrava building.

This nineteenth season, Les Arts és Òpera includes eleven titles that represent practically all operatic periods and styles intertwined by the leitmotif of ‘Redemptio’. Thus, in ‘Manon’ or ‘Il trovatore’, the loss of earthly life implies the culmination of a particular ambition, or the expiation of a guilty life. Redemption by death is also present in ‘The Golden Stool’, ‘Der fliegende Holländer’ or ‘Dialogues des Carmélites’.

Orpheus redeems his impatience by losing Eurydice and Bajazet – in ‘Tamerlano’ – pays for his ambition with his death and gives his daughter’s freedom with it. Elizabeth I – in ‘Robert Devereux’ – redeems herself in life by accepting her misfortunes in favour of her Empire – and the protagonists of ‘L’heure espagnole’ and ‘Gianni Schicchi’ atone comically before the public for their excesses, deceit and greed.

A special case is ‘Cabaré Pierrot’, a double bill with ‘Ein Lichtstrahl’ and ‘Pierrot lunaire’, a show between the jocularity of the former and the mystical avant-garde of Schoenberg, which points to a tragic redemption of the West. In full redemptive tune, ‘Les Arts és Sarsuela’ brings the refreshing ‘La verbena de la Paloma’, where the redemption of popular sins seems not to be entirely exculpated in a lyrical sainete always open to new final possibilities.

Lisette Oropesa, Marina Monzó, Charles Castronovo, Piero Pretti, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Artur Ruciński, Elena Stikhina, Nicholas Brownlee, Franz-Josef Selig, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Iván Ayón Rivas, Doris Soffel, Ambrogio Maestri, Eleonora Buratto, Silvia Tro Santafé and Ismael Jordi are some of the voices that will appear this opera season.

On the podium alongside James Gaffigan, expert maestros lead the line-up, with Maurizio Benini, Leonardo García Alarcón, Riccardo Minasi, René Jacobs, Michele Spotti and Francesco Lanzillotta, who will be joined on stage by respected creators: Willy Decker, Robert Carsen, Àlex Ollé Vincent Huguet, Moshe Leiser & Patrice Caurier, and Jetske Mijnssen. For the zarzuela a specialist returns in José Miguel Pérez Sierra with Nuria Castejón on stage.

On the symphonic side, the conductors most appreciated by Valencian audiences return with exuberant programmes with the great Romantic and late-Romantic repertoire as their emblem: Sir Mark Elder, Gustavo Gimeno, Antonello Manacorda, Thomas Hengelbrock and James Gaffigan, the OCV’s resident conductor.

For its part, Les Arts és Dansa hosts five shows with the best in classical ballet, contemporary dance and flamenco by Lucía Lacarra, Sara Baras, Asun Noales, María Pagés and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

Five essential dates are presented in the Lied cycle, with the debuts of Asmik Grigorian and Michael Volle, as well as the eagerly awaited reunions with Simon Keenlyside, Joyce DiDonato and Michael Fabiano, in their Lied presentation. While ‘Les Arts és Grans Veus’ will host the first performance in Valencia of the diva par excellence, Anna Netrebko, as the emblem of an impressive line-up with Juan Diego Flórez, Piotr Beczała and Sondra Radvanosky.

Well consolidated, ‘Les Arts és Barroc i Música Antiga’, dazzles with an unbeatable triplet with René Jacobs, William Christie and Leonardo García Alarcón, in a cycle that, thanks to the collaboration with the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical, will also bring together the most respected Spaniards in this repertoire: Los Elementos, by Alberto Miguélez Rouco, the soprano Núria Rial, the sopranist Samuel Mariño and the Valencians Mediterrània Consort.For its part, Les Arts will not miss its appointment with the different manifestations of the voice, with geniuses such as José Mercé, Israel Fernández, Mayte Martín, Antonio Reyes and Jesús Méndez, El Pele and Reyes Carrasco in flamenco, as well as Marisa Monte in Brazilian music. While the Valencian musical fabric will be represented by La habitación roja, Doña Manteca, La Plata, Novembre Elèctric and Andreu Valor.

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE A L'OPÉRA DE PARIS

October 2024

OPERA CHARM TEAM

PREMIERE OF ‘DON CARLO’ AT WIENER STAATSOPER

September 2024

Opera Charm Team

Alice Lechner

Alice Lechner comes from a music-loving family. Her first encounter with the opera universe was at the tender age of six. The grandeur of the stage productions and costumes, the backstage chatter, and last, but definitely not least, the music left her in awe, beginning with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The overall feeling that opera awakens in anyone who gets a glimpse into this part of artistic eternity, that each and every day passes the test of time, was what drew her to stay and be a part of this world. The Opera House of Brașov became her second home, and the people who worked there were her second family.

Since then, Alice has devoted her spare time to maximising her musical knowledge through instrumental studies, studying both piano and violin for a short time. In the following years, her number one passion stepped out of the limelight and graciously gave way to Law Studies.
Since 2018 she has been studying Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Her passion for opera, even if it is no longer her top professional priority in terms of career, it has most definitely become her priority during her free time. Wanting to experience the best of both worlds and extend her musical horizons, she regularly attends opera performances throughout Romania and abroad.
With OPERA Charm Magazine, Alice aims to nurture her creative side to help it flourish and bloom and to discover, alongside the magazine’s readers, the fascinatingly complex world of opera.

Currently, she is an LL.M. in Business Law at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iași.

Oana Zamfir

Oana Zamfir is a second year MA student at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, at the Department of Musicology.

She studied violin for 12 years at the “Stefan Luchian” High School of Art in Botosani, later focusing on the theoretical aspects of music. In 2019 she completed her bachelor studies in Musicology as a student of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” in Cluj-Napoca. Her research during 2018-2019 brought to the forefront elements of the archaic ritual within works of composers who activated during the communist period, giving her the opportunity to start a research internship at the “Carl von Ossietzky” University in Germany. In this context, she recorded conversations with members of the Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, and had access to documents directly from the Myriam Marbé archive.

Since 2019 she has been a teacher of Music Education and Theoretical Music Studies, making full use of interactive methods in the musical training of students and working, at the same time, with the children’s choir founded in the first year of her activity.

Her interests include pursuing a degree in interior design in 2020.

Alexandru Suciu

Alexandru Suciu inherited his passion for art growing up in a family of several generations of musicians. He began his musical studies at the “Augustin Bena” School of Music in Cluj, where he studied piano and guitar. Even though his main study direction was philological, his passion for music prevailed. He began his academical journey at the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University, studying Comparative literature and English. He continued by studying Opera Singing at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy. He also graduated the Musical Education section, followed by Artistic Directing at the Musical Performing Arts department.

His multidisciplinary education opened the doors towards research, which is seen both through his participation in national and international conferences and symposia, such as the Salzburg Easter School PhD-forum, organized by the Salzburg Universität or the Silesian Meeting of Young Scholars, organized by the Institute of English at the University of Silesia, as well as the collaboration with Opera Charm Magazine.

During his student years, he won several prizes, including the Grand Prize at the “Paul Constantinescu” National Musical Interpretation Competition, the Romanian Composers and Musicologists’ Union Prize at the same competition, the First Prize and the Schubert Prize at the “Ada Ulubeanu” Competition.

He further developed his artistic skills by specializing in courses and masterclasses held by personalities such as Vittorio Terranova, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Marian Pop, Ines Salazar, Riccardo Zanellato, Paolo Bosisio, Valentina Farcaș and Manuel Lange in contexts such as the Internationale Sommerakademie für Operngesang Deutschlandsberg, Corso Internazionale di Canto Lirico I.M.C. Licata or the Europäische Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Montepulciano. Besides his activity on-stage, he currently teaches Opera Singing Didactics, and Pedagogical Practice within the Department for Teacher Education and Training at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Music Academy.

Cristina Fieraru

Cristina is a 24 year-old Romanian soprano & a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where she pursues the MA program in Vocal Performance.

She made her debut in Pamina from “Die Zauberflöte” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at only 19 years old at the Bucharest National Opera House, as a member of the Ludovic Spiess Experimental Opera Studio. Over the years she made her debut in roles such as Contessa d’Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Mimì & Musetta (La Bohème), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte) in her university’s opera productions.
Her passion and experience extends in the field of choral music, too.

She has been part of our dream team since the fall of 2021. For a good period of time she took care of OPERA Charm’s social media and took you on the monthly journey through the history of opera through our Legends rubric – and a few times through the Theaters around the World rubric.

Her little soul rubric – from 2021 to present – is definitely the Conductors of the Future, where, every month, she gives you the chance to meet a young star of the world of conducting and, of course, to find out what’s the most charming feature of opera in these artists’ views.

BIANCA L. NICA

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