Few festivals offer the summer experience of entering gardens that, although aesthetically cared for, are pure biodiversity. Especially if a short rain brings out all the aromas, as happened this weekend in Peralada when the public left excited the recital of the soprano Diana Damrau and her baritone husband, Nicolas Testé, in the Church of the Carme. Or when, after attending a compositional exercise by choreographer Aimar Pérez Galí at the Mirador, people turned to another experiment: that of maestro Leonardo García Alarcón, who combined Monteverdi and Piazzola with Cappella Mediterranea.

This is what results from chaining one show after another in this reduced edition of the festival, in which the guests walk around and even occupy some space in the town: in the cloister of Sant Domènec, the composer Hèctor Parra and the pianist Imma Santacreu, his wife, did a workshop-concert together. In a hot auditorium – the air conditioners would have altered the acoustics -, they both jumped on all fours on an open grand piano.

Parra rubbed the strings with objects ranging from combs to shells and created almost electronic sounds. He provided fragments of the cycle in which he is inspired by the Mironian constellations and others of his operas, such as the enormous Les bienveillantes, based on Littel’s novel, with the perversity of Nazism explained by an SS, as Parra said before of an overwhelmed audience.

The experience ended with the fifth episode of Orgia, his new chamber opera based on the work of the same name by Pasolini with libretto and editing by Calixto Bieito. The opera that Peralada co-produces with the Liceu (to be seen in April) and Arriaga de Bilbao (premiered there a month ago) is a search for the deep reality of being through a relationship sadomasochist between a man who does not recognize himself as homosexual and the woman.

Surrounded by the bloody Hellenistic torsos that Parra drew during his residency at the Medici villa, the French Academy in Rome, where he composed Orgia, Peralada’s audience enjoyed the artist’s explanations. For a few, they served to make them lose their fear of the contemporary: “In my orchestration, I ask the instrumentalists for adjectives… Metallic, shrillness in the strings… Because my music goes through shrillness and deformation of a sound that at the base can be very harmonious. And I’m very lyrical in singing, huh?” he said, before provoking laughter and explaining that trips to the supermarket are very inspiring to find combs and scouring pads to make the piano strings sound.

After the intense meeting with Parra and Santacreu, the audience immersed themselves in the variety of arias and songs from Amor i vida, a recital that brought together Diana Damrau and her husband with Helmut Deustch on the piano. With the ease of singing and the beautiful vibrato, the German soprano shone both in “Al dolce guidami” by Anna Boleyn and in “Casta diva” or the vaporous Duparc, and also in the musicals (My fair lady) with which she ended the party

He, nevertheless, began dramatically and convincingly in the aria of King Solomon from Gounod’s La reine de Saba, but defended himself in Don Carlo and La Gioconda, and upset the chalice in the Russian Eugene Onegin. Lively and extroverted, Damrau gave a song from Turin as an encore before lending herself to presenting a cookbook at the Perelada winery, whose chef put the meat strudel recipe into practice. She and 69 other singers have contributed recipes to The opera cooks, because Carreras, Kaufmann and Netrebko seem to relax by cooking.

The dance was put on this weekend by Aimar Pérez Galí from Barcelona with Alba, the prelude to a game about choreographic, musical and poetic writing that will premiere at Mercat de les Flors. Five performers and a piano prove that sextines and palindromes have their grammar in choreography.

And the Argentinian García Alarcón closed the Emporda boss with an exciting pairing: Piazzola and Monteverdi. La Cappella Mediterranea skilfully surfed between 17th century Venice and 20th century Buenos Aires, combining modern and ancient instruments, going from a tango to an aria from Orfeo, from a milonga to Poppea’s “Pur ti miro” … From the texts of Horacio Ferrer in Lament de la nimfa …