Perelada shows off her legacy in an evening with opera, dance, haute cuisine… and the clown Rossy de Palma

Four decades pursuing artistic excellence and a single evening to celebrate his entire legacy. This Saturday, the Peralada Festival brought together a hundred and a half guests at its Mirador del Castell for a dinner-show that precisely wanted to keep alive the flame that was lit for the first time in 1987, when Montserrat Caballé sang with the Liceu orchestra and choir outside the castle a Requiem by Mozart directed by Antoni Ros-Marbà. Since then, the Empordà competition can boast of having offered fifty operas, including its own productions and contemporary creations for which they put in all the effort.

Some of their proposals marked a milestone in the history of the festival and led to its international takeoff. Starting with that last five years of the 20th century, when at a Pepita Jimenez with editing by Lluís Homar and musical direction by Josep Pons and the Teatre Lliure Orchestra, it was followed by the production of The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian that La Fura dels Baus raised, followed by The magic flute by Lindsay Kemp -with multiple tiny papagenos on stage-, and the apotheosis Carmen by Calixto Bieito, which was later acquired by the Liceu and which has become the most viewed and exported Catalan opera production even today.

The diners this Saturday remembered all this and more while they were trying out the wagyu tartar or the Moorish pop that Paco Pérez proposed, and while artists such as the countertenor Xavier Sabata, a classic from the last stage of Peralá, wandered on stage in shell with the actress Rossy de Palma, who showed her most clownish appearance and, improvising on the script that Joan Anton Rechi had put together for the occasion, walked around the 23 tables arranged around the stage throwing messages… “I disintegrate with emotion,” she said, speaking of the Turandot that Mario Gas had set up.

Each table was named after a production… Il barbiere di Siviglia, La verbena de la paloma, Coppelia... “Fa molts d’anys de tot això,” the woman from Palma said in her Mallorcan. The plastic artist Pi Piquer had spent twelve days without sleep decorating up to 25 ceramic vases made in Vallfogona with the theme of the various titles to preside over the different tables. Thus, the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, shared the table Carmen -by Bizet’s opera and by the founder of the festival, Carmen Mateu- with the artistic director of the festival, Oriol Aguilà, and with the daughter of Isabel Suqué and Ed Reger, Julia Reger Suqué, who assumed the duties of representing the festival in her mother’s place.

“We take over the future with great enthusiasm,” he said in Catalan before passing the floor to Illa, who, as protocol dictates, closed the parliaments that Aguilà had started, not without thanking the dedication of those 40 years “favoring culture and receiving cultural inputs, in a show of generosity and willingness to share with society as a whole,” he said, before wishing 40 more years of success and guaranteeing the support of the Government. At the next table, The magic flute, A rejuvenated Artur Mas represented that convergent Catalonia that from the beginning extended its hand so that culture would also have a place in the Castell de Peralada, between the vineyards and the casino.

Julia Reger Suqué, who along with her brother Matthew and her cousins ​​Borja and Arturo Suqué Camín represents the fourth generation of the family that owns the castle, has been trained in the United States since high school, later studying Fine Arts and Psychology. Now he has been working at Sotheby’s, after which he seems to have the desire to settle in his homeland. The reins of the Perelada Festival (with an ‘e’ if the brand is mentioned) or the Castell de Peralada Festival (if the town is mentioned) could remain in their hands.

It is up to these four young people who on Saturday were distributed among different tables – Arturo, for example, sat between Joaquim Nadal and Miquel Roca Junyent, whom Paco Pérez himself came out to greet – the decision to recover the main stage in the castle gardens to continue along the path marked by their grandmother Carmen Mateu. A stage in which a young Ainhoa ​​Arteta was once seen in the role of Violetta… as suggested by the fact that there is a table dedicated to The Traviata by Verdi, and which houses the president of the Palau de la Música, Joaquim Uriach, or the president of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Joan Francesc Marco, in addition to the until now president of Cercle del Liceu, Francisco Gaudier, and Mercedes Arnús.

Images flash on the screens that evoke the arrival in Peralada of dance greats such as Rudolf Nuréyev or Mijaíl Barishníkov, and glorious moments such as the premiere of The imperial panther by Carlos Santos or Dalidance, for the centenary of the birth of Salvador Dalí, with an ambitious show by the Catalan choreographer Ramon Oller for his company Metros, which recovered four of the curtains that Dalí created for the ballets Bacchanale, Labyrith and Mad Tristanpremiered in New York between 1939 and 1944 by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo with choreography by Leónidas Massine. Incredible!

“And I played Gala,” De Palma recalled, evoking the visit to Dalí’s house where they were assured that there was the ghost of his wife. That Peralada by Luis Polanco and Luis López Lamadrid was followed by another more theatrical one by Joan Maria Gual, until arriving at this festival that, with the help of Aguilà, has weathered the mainstream storm and has not let itself be carried away by modern music proposals, but has distinguished itself by being the great lyrical bet of the southern European summer.

At the piano, as if it were a piano bar, sits Dani Espasa, who has conducted so many baroque titles at this festival –Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, My fairy queen…-, and among the performers is that dancer called Botis Sevas, with Congolese roots but with a marked British accent in his creations, who in addition to winning the Lawrence Olivier award for best dance creation, has also been the recipient of the Carmen Mateu European Young Artists. Montserrat Seró, a new generation soprano from Lleida, appears singing Rusalka’s moon aria, beautiful. And Sabata himself and the British baritone Mark Milhofer also intervene. All of this with intelligent lighting by Alberto Rodríguez… until it finally gives way to the chocolate egg that everyone will break and which will reveal a sparkling 40th anniversary cake.