Albert Recasens Barberá (Cambrils, 1976) is one of the foremost specialists in Hispanic classical music from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Director of the historicist ensemble La Grande Chapelle, for two decades he has combined passionate musicological research with performance and artistic direction, always with the recovery of unpublished works from the Spanish baroque as a common thread. This Saturday, May 9, in Cervera, as the inaugural event of the Espurnes Barroques festival, he premieres La vida es sueño… en música, a hybrid proposal that intertwines theater and music based on the mythical text by Calderón de la Barca, a master of the Golden Age. The show-concert, produced in collaboration with Ignacio Arellano, editor of the playwright's works, and stage director Eva Rufo, features some fifteen performers who combine theatrical dialogues on stage with villancicos, tonos, motets, and madrigals by composers with whom Calderón had worked, such as Juan Hidalgo, Tomás Torrejón, and Cristóbal Galán.

Losing her voice was simultaneously one of the best and worst things that ever happened to Raquel Andueza (Pamplona, ​​1980). Following a car accident that dislocated her larynx in 2016, the Navarrese soprano was forced to stop singing for almost six months, until two teachers from Italy, Lisa Paglin and Marianna Brilla, helped her regain her voice. "When you lose your voice, you lose the way you communicate with the world," says Andueza. "However, I learned that singing could be easier and that the voice is an instrument that should last a lifetime." Now the Baroque singer feels "freer than ever" and this year she is one of the stars of the eighth edition of the Espurnes Barroques festival, which takes place in central Catalonia over five weekends from this Friday until June 8.