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.

"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 .

Prone to the most extreme readings of classical and contemporary operas, Calixto Bieito presented his show about Giulio Cesare by Handel in Amsterdam, and now this masterpiece by the Baroque musician arrives at the Liceu.

There are many reasons not to miss the opera. Giulio Cesare, which will have six performances at the Liceu from May 25 to June 7. One is obvious: Handel's masterpiece, premiered in 1724 in London, is one of the musical peaks of the Baroque. In addition, the Rambla theater is programming it staged and not in a concert version as is too often the case with the repertoire of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries in Barcelona. The other attractions are detailed by the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor Garcia de Gomar. "There are five ingredients that make these performances very relevant. The first, Xavier Sabata (Julius Caesar). It was necessary for him to do a Handel at the Liceu," says De Gomar, praising Avià's countertenor, who in July 2023 was "a tremendous Ottone, musically exquisite and acting-wise super to The coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi, as noted by the ARA critic, Jaume Radigales. The second is the French soprano Julie Fuchs, crowned as Poppea in that same production and now transformed into Cleopatra. "She's a fantastic Mozartian and Monteverdian," recalls De Gomar.

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.