When they arrived at the apartment a year ago, Mercedes Conde fell in love with the library. Classic, with a fireplace, it was made by some editors when the property was built in 1898. Now it is her office on the days she teleworks, if she does not go to the Palau de la Música, where she is deputy artistic director. There is a chess board, a gift from her husband Javier, who introduced him to her hobby. And next to her, next to a record player, Infinity in a Reed, her bedside book; She has a soft spot for Irene Vallejo.
He says that, if he goes to a “Finestres-type” bookstore, he cannot leave empty-handed. They are accumulating on the table: Transfiguracions, by Lluís Calvo; Mozart’s Requiem. A cultural history, by Miguel Ángel Marín. Also those of Sant Jordi: El retrat de matrimoni, by Maggie O’Farrell –Hamnet loved it–, and Personal effects, by Juan Villoro. He was one of his favorite teachers, along with Antonio Monegal, from whom he just purchased Like the Air We Breathe. He studied Humanities at Pompeu Fabra, and dedicated his master’s thesis to the connection between music and poetry of Joan Maragall. He delved into his complete works, full of post-its. But he usually doesn’t underline books; sometimes he does it in pencil. And he turns a corner if something catches his attention.
He arranges them by themes: music, opera, art, rhetoric, medieval literature (which he studied with Victoria Cirlot), Latin American, French, German, Russian. He read The Brothers Karamazov at a vital moment of identity construction. And a lot of Paul Auster: when he started living with Javier, several titles were repeated. He has a fascination with Cliff. And for the fin de siècle and Stefan Zweig, a reference. He likes biographies and contemporary Catalan poetry, Anna Gual, Jaume Pons Alorda; Cassandra, by Laia Llobera, is placed face-on, the cover visible, just like Paisatges literaris, by Núria Solsona.
Below is a baton that his maternal grandfather gave to Josep Maria Lamaña, founder of Ars Musicae, the orchestra in which Victoria de los Ángeles started. He also has a collection of classical music vinyl records from his grandfather and the yearbook of the Gran Teatre del Liceu from its inauguration, in 1847, until 1930. His is copy 27, with the dedication: “José María Creixell affectionately gives it to his patient and friend Antonio Pons Llibre, February 1948.” Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Eduardo Conde, was a patron of Enric Granados and founder of the El Siglo department store, which burned before the Civil War.
An inveterate music lover, she has hoarded records since she was a teenager. They took her to the opera when she was little. Her mother was a student of Alicia de Larrocha and Juan Torra at the Marshall Academy, and she is a piano teacher. When Conde came home from school, there was always someone playing. She was clear that she would dedicate herself to music, but not as a performer. At the age of 16 she did research on the reception of Puccini’s works in the press in Barcelona, ??and went to Roger Alier’s house to ask him to tutor her; He was the first person to take her seriously. After finishing her degree, she wrote in specialized publications, and directed the Catalan Musical Magazine.
Now that his son learns to read, he remembers that “lifelong discovery that opens up the world to you.” She has reserved a shelf for him with The Gnomes, stories by Andersen, some from the Minalima publishing house, or Invisible Animals. She inherited The Five from her three older brothers and read the Steamboat ones. After her, her father – a chemical engineer with a vocation as a historian – gave her Tolkien books, introducing her to a universe that connected her with Wagner, Germanic and Nordic mythology. She saw that fantasy is based on our cultural roots: “It is a way of understanding how society is constructed.”
For a time, Love in the Time of Cholera would be his favorite. And although he didn’t get into One Hundred Years of Solitude the first time, he made two trips to Colombia and decided to reread it. Then she was impressed to discover in Macondo a detailed analysis of the archetypes that exist in any family, a topic on which she had reflected in relation to the things that happen and the role you occupy: “And from this perspective, it was brutal.”
