Contralto Nathalie Stutzmann to headline Torroella de Montgrí Music Festival

True to its principles, Nathalie Stutzmann is the guest artist in the 31st edition of the Torroella de Montgri Music Festival. The French contralto will offer two concerts during the latest edition of the festival, which despite the crisis, is still an impressive showcase for classical music. This year’s 15 performances will take place in the town church which has the capacity for 550 spectators. The Torroella Festival also features performances by local musicians such as Gemma Coma-Alabert, Pepo Domenech and the Academy 1750 orchestra.

The 31st edition of the Festival runs from the 30th July through to the 26th August. French contralto Nathalie Stutzmann is the special guest this year but she will not be playing alone. The first concert will feature Orfeó 55 and the second includes Inger Södergren on piano. Stutzmann is the festival’s greatest attraction. The French artist was the first to accept a lowering of her fees due to the fact that the budget has been reduced by 10%. According to artistic director, Oriol Pérez, in order not to suffer a loss in quality, the festival had to look for new ways to cover the artist's costs. Other festival highlights include concerts by Gemma Coma-Alabert (mezzosoprano) and Pep Domènech (oboe) who will play Vivaldi, Haendel and Bach. Stefano Demicheli, on harpshicord will make up a repertoire to be recorded in three albums. A concert featuring the Requiem by Joan Cererols will be dedicated to Catalan politician Ernest Lluch, murdered by ETA in 2000. Some musicology studies show that Bach knew about Cererol’s music and with this pretext, Cor La Stagione will record a new album, too. Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Missa en Si menor BMW 232” will be the most important work in the whole festival while Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor, will act for the first time in Barcelona playing pieces by Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Hahn, Albéniz and Massenet. The mayor of Torroella de Montgrí, Josep Maria Rufí, emphasized the importance of the Festival for the municipality in generating cultural tourism and highlighted the creation of the new Auditorium Espai-Ter, with its excellent acustics. According to Ferran Mascarell, the Catalan Minister for Culture, the Festival is a deeply-rooted one and shows, in his opinion, how the “cultural system in Catalonia can set aside centralism in the summer to promote initiatives in what we used to call the “outskirts” of the capital.