A Baroque painting of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian is the image for the fourth edition of the Easter Festival, organized by the Perelada Festival during Holy Week, this year from April 2nd to 5th. And Baroque is the music of the Venetian composer Antonio Caldara, who premiered his oratorio on Holy Thursday in 1717. Christ condemned in Vienna. 309 nine years later, and also on Holy Thursday, that same oratorio will be played in the Carmen church of Peralada, performed by Vísperas de Arnadí and the Francesc Valls Choir. "It's a world premiere, because Christ condemned "It has never been performed in modern times," says Dani Espasa, director of Vísperas de Arnadí, who has worked from the manuscript held in Vienna. "Caldara was choirmaster to Archduke Charles in Barcelona, ​​and between 1708 and 1710 he influenced the introduction of opera. Later, once settled in Vienna, he composed several oratorios like this one. We have a wonderful project on our hands," says Espasa, for whom "it is very exciting to bring to light this high-quality music by a composer who marked the musical life of Barcelona."

At the Castell de Peralada restaurant, everything is in full swing at eleven in the morning, preparing for the midday and evening service, which takes place on the terrace overlooking the pond. The Peralada Festival has just begun, with a program that attracts lovers of good concerts. Summer has begun, and the restaurant's menu has changed. "I've been working there since day one," explains chef Javier Martínez (Barcelona, 1984), who recalls meeting the beloved Xavier Sagristà and Toni Gerez while working together at Mas Pau.

The Peralada Festival continues its summer programming with the absolute premiere of Genius loci, A modern and daring proposal created by stage director Rafael R. Villalobos and countertenor Xavier Sabata. The show, conceived as a kind of dramatized recital, halfway between performance and installation, transforms the garden into a space for abstract meditation on existential doubts and human crises. Without any excessively narrative pretensions, Sabata combines the performance of nine musical fragments with the recitation of texts in Spanish inspired by the book The garden loses [The Lost Garden] by Jorn de Précy, accompanied by Jonas Nordberg on the archlute, who also acts as an actor, and Liam Byrne, on the viola da gamba and electronics.

Except for the Empordà summer music calendar with the first concert of the Perelada Festival, which this year, exceptionally, has been brought forward to the first two weeks of July. The program, conceived as a kind of symphony of Twelve movements around the gardens of paradise, has raised the curtain with the debut of the extraordinary mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, accompanied on piano by Craig Terry, in the church of Carme.

"It is a show that is difficult to define," says countertenor Xavier Sabata. He is one of the protagonists of Genius Loci, the show co-produced with Rafael R. Villalobos, which will premiere on Saturday, July 5, at the Perelada Festival. The show combines poetry, music, dance, and sound spaces, taking the book as its reference. The Lost Garden by Jorn de Précy, a heteronym for the Italian writer and gardener Marco Martella. "They are the words of someone with whom I connected immediately," says Villalobos to explain that the protagonist is obsessed with tending a garden because he is very afraid of the outside world. The show is not linear, but is a dialogue between the protagonists who weave it: Xavier Sabata (countertenor and actor), Jonas Nordberg (archlute player and actor), Liam Byrne (viola da gamba and electronics) and Cachito Vallés (visual artist), all directed by Rafael R. Vilallobos , who also directed the lighting and scenography by Rafael R. Vilallobos .

This summer, the gardens of Peralada Castle will reopen their doors to host a new edition of the Peralada Festival, which this year will be held more as usual, from July 3 to 18. In total, there will be twelve proposals of music, dance, and opera, with special attention to contemporary creation, under the motto of "the invitation to paradise," conceived as twelve movements of a single cultural and artistic symphony. Most of the shows, all small-format, will be performed inside the Carme Church and in the Mirador space, while work on the new open-air auditorium is pending.