Handel: German Arias @ Madrid International Festival of Sacred Art

With ‘Origen. La semilla de los tiempos’, the Accademia del Piacere, the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía and the Teatro de la Maestranza take audiences on a musical dance journey somewhere between tradition and the avant-garde. Baroque music enters into dialogue with flamenco, travelling through the history of Andalusia in a story that gives pride of place to emotion, memory and scenic beauty.

Swedish choreographer Johan Inger won the Benois de la Danse 2016 for his striking new choreography set to the beloved music of Georges Bizet, arranged by Rodion Shchedrin. Inger returned to the source novel by Prosper Mérimée for inspiration, framing the action through the eyes of a child observer and stripping the story to its universal themes of love, passion, and the consequences of violence. Kayoko Everhard shines as Carmen, supported with aplomb by Daan Vervoort as Don José and a superlatively polished supporting cast — including the dancers of the Spanish National Dance Company—in this alluring production from La Rochelle’s La Coursive. Curt Allen Wilmer’s dynamic set design and Tom Visser’s expert lighting highlight the drama of this treasured tale as you’ve never seen it before!

Antonio Vivaldi’s baroque music masterpiece Juditha triumphans is presented by the Greek National Opera for the first time, as part of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution. The work is about the victory of the Venetians at the siege of Corfu, which acted as a catalyst in stopping the Ottoman advance into the Christian West. Juditha triumphans is the only extant oratorio of the four Vivaldi is known to have composed. The intense war atmosphere is portrayed through the dynamic choral parts, while Juditha’s faith and honesty through the lyric and tender writing. Remarkable is the use of many different and relatively rare instruments, such as the viola d’amore, the chalumeaux (early clarinets) and theorboes, with which Vivaldi brings out the work’s highlights.

Madrid's International Festival of Sacred Art (FIAS) offers a uniquely diverse program at various venues across the Spanish capital every year. An opportunity to enjoy the work of high profile artists as well as new names, works and various other performances. El Gran Teatro del Mundo opens the festival with a French composer: Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Claus Guth's exciting 2017 staging of Handel’s "Rodelinda" at Madrid’s Teatro Real, featuring Lucy Crowe and Bejun Mehta as Rodelinda and Bertarido, with conductor Ivor Bolton. After the successes of "Giulio Cesare" in 1723 and "Tamerlano" in 1724, Rodelinda completes the trilogy of Handel’s great opera seria masterpieces. The work was composed in 1725 using Nicola Francesco Haym’s libretto, a work inspired by Antonio Salvi’s earlier libretto which had been itself adapted from Pierre Corneille’s tragedy "Pertharite, roi des Lombards". Rodelinda thus brought one of the most glorious compositional periods in the Handel’s career to a close, about a decade after his arrival in the British capital. Mixing romantic storytelling and political intrigue, Handel produced one of his most beautiful scores, a true operatic tour de force.

Madrid's International Festival of Sacred Music (FIAS) offers a unique international program every year at various venues around the Spanish capital. The venue for this concert is the San Miguel basilica for a performance of Tomás Luis de Victoria's Tenebræ Responsoria by Cantoría, a young Spanish ensemble with an international following.

Filmed at Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Humo, (smoke) combines dance and song in a tribute to the 19th century cigar makers who also inspired the character of Carmen from the famous opera. Choreographer Rafaela Carrasco creates portraits that reveal diverse lives that often contradict clichés of the past and present.

Performed at Madrid's historic Teatro Real in 2018, Ivor Bolton conducts Benjamin Britten's opera based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. In her repeated clashes with the Earl of Essex-a longtime favorite of the queen who was ultimately put to death for treason-Elizabeth I is depicted as flawed and vain, human and sympathetic.