A great night of opera at the Torroella de Montgrí Festival. Catalan soprano Serena Sáenz, accompanied by the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, delivered an evening of pyrotechnics and high-flying vocal virtuosity on the Espai Ter stage. In her debut at the Empordà festival, the young Barcelona singer, who has already made a name for himself on the international opera scene, captivated the public on the eve of the Virgen de Agost with a sublime display of operatic fragments from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Throughout the summer, in the Girona regions a lot of festivals offer concerts and shows of all kinds every week and, often, it is difficult to choose among so much cultural offer. Within the field of classical music, one of the unmissable events is the Torroella de Montgrí Festival, at the foot of the massif that separates the Empordà, which this year celebrates its 45th edition. Focusing mainly on early and baroque music, but also featuring contemporary offerings and repertoires from all styles and periods, from the 14th century to the present day, the Bajo Empordà festival offers a very interesting, unique, and diverse program of up to 32 concerts, which runs from August 3 to 22. To help you choose and sort through all the offerings at the Torroella festival, prominent figures from our country's cultural world recommend to the ARA the most attractive and essential concerts, designed for all tastes and interests.

The Fringe Festival will fill Torroella de Montgrí with promising young musicians. For three days, from July 18th to 20th, they will showcase their artistic offerings to the public while also mingling and sharing experiences with other musicians, cultural managers, programmers, music journalists, and professionals from the entertainment world. In its twelfth edition, the festival will offer a total of 18 concerts of classical, early music, jazz, and roots music, with the participation of some seventy artists. All concerts are free and will take place in different venues throughout the town: Plaza de la Vila, the Petit Cinema, La Sala, the Espai Ter auditorium, and the headquarters of the Vila Casas and Mascort foundations.

"We live in an algorithmic society that tends to consume everything, including culture, immediately," reflects Montse Faura. Bajo-Empordà is a far-reaching temporal experience that covers six centuries of musical history, from the 14th century onwards, with a concert by the group Tasto Solo about the Ars Subtilior at the court of John I of Aragon (a king who spent the last month of his life in Torroella until he died in strange circumstances hunting in Foix'. A tandem of the viola da gamba player Lucile Boulanger and Calling Marian will fuse Baroque and electronic music in a Versailles-style setting on the last day of the festival in a free concert. There will be 17 concerts in total, which also bridge the gap between tradition and innovation. The festival features 40% early music. The Musiciens du Louvre will open the event performing Handel, conducted by Marc Minkowski. The line-up will include the Catalan soprano Serena Sáenz, who will make her debut in Torroella with the Vallés Symphony Orchestra; you will also be able to hear the vocal and instrumental ensemble Armonico Consort, with Dani Espasa conducting Vespers of Arnadí