The Ópera XXI awards of the national lyrical sector have gone, in their sixth edition, to Josep Pons as best musical director and the actor and director Juan Echanove as best stage director. The first for his Wagner’s Parsifal at the Liceu, in May 2023, and the second for the zarzuela Pan y toros, by Barbieri, premiered in October 2022. The new production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose, premiered in Spain in the Teatro Real, and Orgia, by Hèctor Parra and libretto by Calixto Bieito, at the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao, have in turn been awarded as best new production and best contemporary proposal respectively.
As for the voices, the jury has taken into account the new bases of the award which, apart from adding artistic categories (scenography, lighting, costumes and video creation), has wanted to promote national artists by creating an extraordinary candidacy for foreign singers. Thus, the Italian soprano Ermonela Jaho has been recognized in this last section for her performance as Suor Angelica in the celebrated Il trittico by Puccini at the Liceu, while the soprano Ángeles Blancas takes the award for best female singer for her performance of role of Kostelni?ka in the opera Jen?fa, by Leoš Janá?ek, at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville. And in the young singer category, Barcelona soprano Serena Sáenz has stood out for Donizetti’s Don Pasquale with which she opened the Liceu season and for the role of Lisa in Bellini’s La Sonnambula at the Real.
For his part, the baritone Juan Jesús Rodríguez receives the award in the male singer category for several roles: the Count of Luna in Verdi’s Il trovatore, which he sang at the Liceu and at ABAO Bilbao Ópera, in addition to his Don Carlo in Verdi’s Ernani , at the Oviedo Opera, and the role of Vidal Hernando in the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda, by Moreno Torroba, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela.
In the section of the categories intended to reward the technical and creative value of professionals on Spanish stages, the Ópera XXI awards the work of the set designer Daniel Bianco, the illuminator Eduardo Bravo, the costume designer Jesús Ruiz and the video creator Franc Aleu, the latter for his contribution to Àlex Ollé’s staging of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which arrived last season at Les Arts de Valencia.
The Spanish lyrical heritage award recognizes the recovery of the zarzuela San Franco de Sena, by Emilio Arrieta, at the Baluarte Foundation. And the best initiative or project that contributes to the dissemination of operatic activity has been for La gata perduda, the co-creation of the Liceu with the Barcelona neighborhood of Raval, the first production of the Opera Prima program with which the Gran Teatre promotes creation community as a means of transforming people.
Finally, the OLA award for the best Latin American operatic production went to Il Guarany, at the Municipal Theater of Sao Paulo. An opera that represented at the time the glory of Brazilian music, based on the novel O Guarani by José de Alencar.
