A dry stone and palm tree, and with the sea in the background. This is how unusual the surroundings of the new Cap Rocat festival are, so different from those that take place in the Mediterranean summer in gardens, cloisters or palace patios. This is celebrated on top of a Mallorcan fortress carved into the rock, one of the nine coastal batteries that the Spanish government had built when Cuba lost. The island had to be defended. And judging by the borders and drawings on the stone, it had to be done with class, even in the midst of the financial ruin of 1898.
This area of ??the cape of the municipality of Llucmajor was a fiefdom of the Ministry of Defense until, after obligatory military service was eliminated, it was sold to the architect and designer Antonio Obrador (Palma de Mallorca, 1956), author of acclaimed hotel restoration works that combine conservation and modernity, who longed to turn it into a hotel.
It took him nine years to get the permits: ministries, councils, conservation organizations (even marine)… The hotel industry on the island thought he was crazy, but in 2010 he opened Cap Rocat (formerly Cap Enderrocat) as something more than a resort luxury for 3,700 euros per night. In his meticulous hands –he even designs the wardrobe for the staff, with an orientalist Mediterraneanness–, the rehabilitated fortress, winner of the Europa Nostra Award, opens up strong spaces of welcoming austerity. It is synthesis and abstraction, a place to abandon yourself to your own being.
And in this unexpected introspection – it is a pity that only guests and clients of the restaurant La Fortaleza by the Majorcan chef Víctor García can visit it – this place of Roman and Arab settlements and Italian influences hosts a classical festival, which is mainly in charge of the daughter of Obrador, Maria Obrador.
This third edition –already with three days of concerts– opened on Friday with a Cavalleria rusticana in concert in the voices (microphoned) of Elina Garanca, Michael Fabiano, Luca Salsi, Maria Agresta and Anna Goma.
“We will have to use other types of microphones than these for conversation,” Garanca pointed out after interpreting Pietro Macagni’s opera together with the Balearic Symphony and a choir formed for the occasion. “Yes, the wind has played a trick,” added the festival’s musical director, Pablo Mielgo, happy that the concert was going to be heard well on the Deutsche Grammophon platform that had recorded it.
The teacher Henrik Nánási had replaced Nicola Luisoti due to illness. “We called Gustavo [Dudamel] but he was in Mauritius with his family,” said artistic director Ilias Tzempetonidis, who is also artistic director of Teatro San Carlo in Naples. “Here we will bring the greats: Gustavo [Dudamel], Anna [Netrebko], Jonas [Kaufmann]…”. Today Nadine Sierra comes to close the edition with a recital.
