ROME SURRENDERS TO PERELADA

Today marked the conclusion of the extraordinary edition of Festival Perelada in Rome, which has been, above all, a celebration. A celebration that united heritage, spirituality and contemporary creation to commemorate two historic milestones: the Millennium of the Abbey of Montserrat and the prelude to the 40th anniversary of Festival Perelada. Three intense days transformed the Eternal City into the privileged stage of this double anniversary, reaffirming music as a universal language capable of bringing together institutions, creators and audiences from around the world.

On 1 October, the Palazzo di Spagna, seat of the Embassy of Spain to the Holy See, opened the expedition with splendour. The saxophone quartet Kebyart unfolded its creative energy with a programme that transformed Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite into a contemporary sonic fresco, performed Bernat Vivancos’s commissioned piece Ay luna que reluces, inspired by the Songbook of the Duke of Calabria, and evoked Italian cinema through the music of Nino Rota. Afterwards, the baroque orchestra Vespres d’Arnadí, conducted by Dani Espasa, paid tribute to Corelli with Corelliana, a journey through the concerto grosso including works by Alessandro Scarlatti, Georg Friedrich Händel and Francesco Geminiani. Their vibrant and contrasting performance immersed the audience in European baroque within one of Rome’s most historically charged settings.

On 2 October, attention focused on the legacy of Catalan composer Domènec Terradellas, a key figure of European baroque closely linked to Rome. The Church of San Pietro in Montorio hosted the concert Terradellas in the Eternal City, featuring soprano Sara Blanch, countertenor Juan Manuel Morales, the vocal ensemble Cantoría and Vespres d’Arnadí, directed by Dani Espasa from the harpsichord. The programme, including three seminal works by Terradellas —A los dolores de María Santísima, Dixit Dominus and Laudate pueri—, was a modern-day premiere, as these pieces had never been performed in contemporary times. With expressive force and historical rigour, this revival resurrected a legacy silenced for centuries and offered a moving dialogue between 18th-century Catalonia and present-day Rome.

Today, 3 October, the Casa dei Cavalieri di Rodi and the Basilica of Sant’Anselmo all’Aventino brought the expedition to a close with the Iberian Renaissance polyphony of Cantoría and the spiritual solemnity of the Escolania de Montserrat and its Capella de Música, conducted by Pau Jorquera and joined by soprano Sara Blanch. A symbolically rich finale that encapsulated the spirit of this expedition: music as a universal language capable of conveying history, faith and contemporaneity.

Institutional and Diplomatic Support

This extraordinary expedition, a true cultural embassy, was made possible thanks to the fraternity of the Abbey of Montserrat and Festival Perelada, and with the support of the Embassy of Spain to the Holy See and the Order of Malta, the Embassy of Spain in Italy, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Institut Ramon Llull, the Instituto Cervantes and the Fondazione di Arte Sacra of Rome. Several cultural institutions accompanied the festival during these days, notably the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

The presence of institutional and religious figures such as H.E. Isabel Celaá, Ambassador of Spain to the Holy See; H.E. Miguel Fernández-Palacios, Ambassador of Spain to Italy; the Right Honourable Salvador Illa, President of the Generalitat de Catalunya; the Honourable Ramon Espadaler, Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs; the Honourable Sònia Hernández, Minister of Culture; Eduardo Aznar, Consul General of Spain in Rome; Luis García Montero, Director of Instituto Cervantes; the Honourable Miquel Noguer, President of the Girona Provincial Council; Miquel Brugat, Mayor of Peralada; the Reverend Father Manel Gasch i Hurios, Abbot of Montserrat; Father Bernat Juliol, Commissioner of the Millennium of Montserrat; Father Jordi-Agustí Piqué i Collado, Prior of Montecassino; and Father Ignasi M. Fossas, President Abbot of the Subiaco-Cassinese Congregation OSB, as well as representatives of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Roman Curia, highlighted the international dimension of this project.

The Closing of a Historic Edition

With nearly 600 people filling emblematic spaces of Rome, this expedition was a unique milestone that turned the Eternal City into the stage of a true cultural embassy. The Millennium of Montserrat imbued the project with the strength of a spiritual and musical tradition spanning centuries, with the Abbey of Montserrat as its spiritual and institutional pillar, and the Escolania and its Capella de Música as its most vivid and symbolic expression.

“This expedition to Rome has a clear origin: the Easter Festival. Without it, we probably would not have taken this step. There, thanks to the complicity of Father Jordi-A. Piqué, we thought there was a very good connection with Rome, through the repertoire of sacred and early music and the many recovery projects,” explains Oriol Aguilà, Artistic Director of the Festival. “And along the way we reunited with Montserrat as our travel companion. We embraced and said: let’s go together. And together we have made this adventure greater.”

Over these days, Perelada has projected what has defined it for four decades: artistic excellence, dialogue with heritage and a commitment to original creation. The contemporary vitality and boldness of the Kebyart Quartet, the baroque splendour and historical rigour of Vespres d’Arnadí, the luminous and virtuosic voice of soprano Sara Blanch —Festival Perelada’s resident artist in 2016 and today with an established international career—, and finally the renewing energy of Cantoría, an emerging ensemble of the new generation specialising in early music, have all been vivid examples of this vocation. “We have always said we are a festival of fidelities. These fidelities, built over time, result in consistency and artistic excellence. The concerts we experienced in Rome are the best proof of this,” declared Aguilà. “We wanted to show more than ever that a festival takes place in unique spaces and is an experience of limited duration, with a beginning and an end, and therefore intensity, dialogue with heritage, monumentality and complicity with the environment. This is what we tried to achieve with the programme we presented in Rome, where every concert established a dialogue with the space that hosted it: Corelliana at the Palazzo di Spagna, presenting works by Alessandro Scarlatti —together with other Italian baroque masters— in the very place where the composer had premiered some of his pieces; Sant’Anselmo all’Aventino with the Escolania de Montserrat, the worldwide headquarters of the Benedictine Confederation; or the programme dedicated to Domènec Terradellas, who maintained a close bond with Rome, the city where he developed a decisive part of his career and consolidated himself as a master of sacred and operatic music.”

With the door open to new expeditions, Festival Perelada reaffirms its international vocation and its commitment to home-grown artists and ensembles. In this regard, the professional dimension has also been key: in recent days, bilateral meetings with programmers and institutions have been held, and an active working agenda has been launched in the fields of early music, sacred music and new creation. This Roman edition has been a majestic celebration that united heritage, spirituality and contemporary creation, consolidating Perelada as a leading cultural platform and projecting its values and artistic excellence onto Europe’s great stages.