The Perelada Festival reaffirms its commitment to Holy Week

The Perelada Festival reaffirms its commitment to its Easter edition with the aim of providing new dates for the tourist offer beyond summer. "We want Empordà and the Costa Brava to attract people from all over the world to come and spend Holy Week here," defended its artistic director, Oriol Aguilar, at the presentation of the program for the spring event that will take over the Carme Church with six concerts.

Perelada Easter will celebrate its second edition from March 28 to 30, with an intense program that will include the absolute premiere of Tenebrae Responsoria by the composer from Reus, Joan Magrané, a work that "takes a Baroque topic and brings it to our days." He compared it to the photograph illustrating the poster for this edition of the festival, a reinterpretation of the classic still life made by film director Pedro Almodóvar. Accompanied by Maria Hinojosa and the GIO Symphonia, Magrané will return to Perelada Castle after premiering the contemporary opera Diàlegs de Tirant e Carmesina in 2019. This time, he will be directed by Francesc Prat, who has already premiered six of his pieces and will add a seventh.

Also noteworthy in the second Easter edition will be the debut in Spain of the young Korean pianist Yuncham Lim. At just 18 years old, Lim made history when he became the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held in Texas. With a meteoric career, he is in demand on major international stages, from Carnegie Hall to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and those of Paris or the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. With this growing resume, he will arrive in Peralada and will do so with Frédéric Chopin's Études.

The program will be accompanied by the Baroque ensemble Vespres d'Arnadí with Dani Espasa in musical direction with Alessandro Stradella's San Giovanni Battista. This oratorio for five voices, including countertenor Xavier Sabata, will also premiere in Spain in Peralada, but partially, this being the first time it will be performed in modern times, according to Sabata. It was a work that premiered with great success in 17th-century Rome, but quickly fell into oblivion until it was recovered in 1949. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with Bach's version by the ensemble Bachcelona Consort and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera of Versailles will complete the lineup.

The grand finale will undoubtedly be provided by the giant rabbits of Australian artist Amanda Parer, which will invade the castle gardens on Good Friday. Hand in hand with the Empordà creative studio Brava Performing Arts, the tradition of searching for Easter eggs will merge in Peralada with dance to sway to the rhythm of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

"This is a very exciting moment because it confirms what we said a year ago: the Easter edition is here to stay," said Isabel Suqué, president of the Perelada Festival and the Castell de Perelada Foundation. After achieving 95% occupancy in last year's concerts, the organization hopes that the "spiritual communion of Easter" experienced in the first edition will once again be convincing, very different from the summer event, as Aguilar points out: "A year ago we were surprised not to have done it sooner."