He is leaving one of the main speakers of opera, a lover of the genre, a scholar of the history of this art who, in addition, was a great communicator. The popular conferences and publications had made him a key figure in the renaissance of opera fans in Catalonia. Roger Alier (Los Teques, Venezuela, 1941) died at his home in Barcelona yesterday, aged 81, due to an organic dysfunction that had kept him hospitalized weeks before. The vigil will take place in Sancho de Ávila this afternoon and tomorrow, until the time of the lay ceremony, at 1:25 p.m.
Music critic of La Vanguardia since 1987, Roger Alier’s name had been associated with this header for decades. He had practiced the profession in several national and foreign publications, he had published several books, whether they were biographies, such as that of Luciano Pavarotti, or treatises and dictionaries of total reference.
The Liceu was about to give him the Gold Medal this July and will dedicate the functions of L’Incoronazione di Poppea to him, which, considering Monteverdi, the founder of the opera, is still symbolic for to an introducer of the genre in society. Especially when the one directing from the podium is his contemporary and friend, Jordi Savall, and when the one directing the assembly is Calixto Bieito, someone who was so controversial to him when he premiered his Ballo in Maschera and Don Giovanni, a criticism that Alier he harshly titled “Urinating on Mozart”.
“A charismatic person is leaving, with an encyclopedic knowledge of opera and other curious professions – says the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar-. A hardened traveler who spoke many languages ??and who was much admired and loved by the singers”. Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Real, highlights his “unique talent for explaining the anecdotes that have generated the history of opera”.
Alier dies having had a very full life, says his disciple and also critic of La Vanguardia, Jordi Maddaleno. And even if he didn’t live to collect the Lyceist Medal, he was aware of the recognition. “It is something very unexpected. If I haven’t done anything else than what I loved!”, declared Alier when he heard the news.
It was in 1963 when he made his first collaboration with the Liceu. The businessman in charge at the time, Joan Antoni Pàmias, was impressed by the fact that he wrote opera in Catalan and commissioned him to write the programs in that language. His mastery of the language in full Francoism was due to the lessons he had received as a child from his mother, when they lived in New Guinea. “He taught me Spanish, Catalan and English at the same time, and also how to type and play the piano. At the age of five I played it better than now”, he joked.
Son of the psychiatrist Joaquim Alier y Gómez, exiled in Venezuela, he moved with his parents to the USA, Australia, New Guinea and the island of Java, where he attended primary school in English and Dutch. In 1951 he moved to Barcelona. He studied piano at the Liceu Conservatory and majored in Modern History. He researched the figure of Joan-Pau Canals i Martí, Baron de la Vallroja, and obtained cum laude and the extraordinary doctoral award with the thesis The origins of opera in Barcelona, ??in 1979.
He also studied aspects of modernist music, such as La Societat Choral Catalunya Nova, in 1975. In the seventies he directed the universal and Catalan music section of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, in which he collaborated with Max Cahner. He was a critic in the magazine Serra d’Or and the newspaper Avui.
Professor of Music History at the University of Barcelona since 1979, he always supported young people, also from the Sabadell Opera School. In the eighties he directed the music section of Daimon, where he published biographies of Bach and Scarlatti. In 1991 he founded the magazine Ó pera Actual, which he directed until 2000. He published an extensive Diccionario de la opera (2007) in two volumes, translated operas into Catalan and promoted the performance of some titles at the Teatre Principal de Barcelona
Academician of the Royal Academy of Good Letters in Barcelona, ??member of the Advisory Board of the Liceu Conservatory, honorary president of the Federation of Friends of the Opera of Catalonia, Alier leaves behind an unpublished book that will have to be published, because until at the last moment he continued to work in the dissemination of music, culture and opera.
