La vida breve

A national monument in Spain, Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve is perhaps the greatest opera ever written in the Spanish language. A kind of “tragic zarzuela”, it unites verismo atmosphere, Andalusian local colour and a score shimmering with reminiscences of French Impressionism. Written in 1905, La vida breve is the story of a poor gypsy and her lover, who is engaged to wed a wealthy girl. “Simply a stroke of genius”, wrote Spain’s Opera Viva about Giancarlo del Monaco’s austere, minimalist staging at Valencia’s Palau

de les Arts Reina Sofía. Maestro Lorin Maazel, whom El País hailed as the “triunfador” of the evening, leads an exquisite array of soloists headed by Chilean soprano Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Jorge de León and María Luisa Corbacho.

Orfeo ed Euridice

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the small but ambitious Castell de Peralada Festival, the famous Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus and its director Carlus Padrissa staged Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. A splendid cast as well as an avant-garde production that makes extensive use of large projection screens and includes the members of the orchestra as actors onstage result in one of the most exciting opera performances in recent years. “La Fura’s concept is surprising and its originality demands our attention … it gives rise to moments of great beauty and evocative power” (El País).