The Castell de Peralada Festival has begun to digitize its vast documentary collection, made up of more than 50,000 searchable files, including photographs, illustrations, posters and other documents.
So far, 11,000 slides made during the Festival, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, have been digitized, as well as the musical galas organized by Casinos de Catalunya between 1982 and 1992.
Most of the digitized photos are from the photographer Josep Aznar, who died in 2017. Nearly 6,000 negatives of the same photographer are currently being digitized, coming from the Documentation Center and Museum of Performing Arts, where Aznar’s photographic collection is located. .
The first phase of the project provides for a documentary collection of 21,000 images and will be available before the end of this year. The project will end in 2026, coinciding with the celebration of the four decades of the festival’s existence, through which the leading swords of the world of music, dance, opera and performing arts have passed.
Among the many stellar moments that users will have in one click are the photographs of performances at the festival by opera singers such as Montserrat Caballé, Plácido Domingo, Jaume Aragall, Victoria de los Ángeles, among others.
Also the dancers Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisétskaya, Roland Petit, Maurice Béjart or Sylvie Guillem or the musician and conductor Mstilsv Rostrpvóvich.
In the archive it will also be possible to consult outstanding moments of the performing arts such as Carmen by Calixto Bieto, which caused controversy at the time and which is still alive after more than twenty years of premiere at the Festival.
They will also be compiled as unforgettable musical moments such as the return to the stage of Josep Carreras, after overcoming leukemia in a recital that went around the world in 1988, and which had Lady Diana and Queen Sofía among the audience, or the premiere absolute from the opera Babel 46, by the composer Xavier Montsalvatge.
The director of the festival, Oriol Aguilà, stressed today that “the first stone is being laid” for this historical and digital open-book archive that will have “a documentary and educational value” and that will allow access to witnesses of the history of music, performing arts, opera and dance of the country that have passed through the festival throughout its history. “The eyes of the festival’s photographers are essential to leave a mark on this story,” he points out.
The Cellnex Foundation, promoted by Cellnex Telecom, which works to reduce the digital, social and territorial divides through projects that improve connectivity, plays a prominent role in this digitization process.
“The dissemination of this collection, and real-time access to all its contents from anywhere in the world, is yet another example of how technology is a lever that opens up new opportunities to project the Festival internationally,” said Toni Brunet, director of Public and Corporate Affairs of Cellnex and trustee of the Cellnex Foundation.
