Josep Vallverdú (1923-2026) did not consider himself a specialist in children’s and young adult literature (LIJ), for which he was so recognized, but preferred to speak of “adventure novels.” And although in many cases this was true, what was an adventure was his life, which ended on Tuesday and which is not easy to approach with much perspective given the relevance his figure gained in recent years.
On March 7, 1999, just four days after delivering the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner, Stanley Kubrick died in his sleep from a myocardial infarction. His sudden death, the decade that had passed since his previous film (Full Metal Jacket, 1987), and the morbid curiosity that Hollywood’s fashionable couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, starred in the posthumous film, gave the premiere a certain testamentary aura that exponentially raised expectations. Critics and audiences disagreed. A stroke of genius? A blunder? Or was the message simply not understood? Be that as it may, the film has aged remarkably well, features some memorable scenes, and, above all, contains not one but two succulent parties, two distorting mirrors of the same elite.
For decades, Carmen Burgos-Bosch opened the doors of her apartment in La Pedrera to the curious, architects, scholars, and admirers of Antoni Gaudí. She showed them the undulating ceilings, pointed out details that went unnoticed by others, and shared anecdotes of a life spent among some of the most celebrated forms of modern architecture.
Musician Joan Roca, bassist and founder of the group Antònia Font, passed away this morning at the age of 51, leaving the musical scene of Mallorca in deep shock. It is a hard blow for a band that has been central to the culture and music of the Balearic Islands and Catalonia.
What would good stories be without secondary characters? Without being the pillars of the narrative, they also support it and give it depth and texture; it is often they who lift the veil of appearances, at least a little. For that reason, they put so much effort into the castings that brought Vida privada (1932), Josep Maria de Sagarra’s great novel, to the screen.
Four decades pursuing artistic excellence and a single evening to celebrate all its legacy. The Peralada Festival gathered this Saturday a hundred and fifty guests at its Mirador del Castell for a dinner-show with which it rightly wanted to keep alive the flame that was first lit in 1987, when Montserrat Caballé sang alongside the orchestra and choir of the Liceu outside the castle in a Mozart Requiem conducted by Antoni Ros-Marbà. Since then, the Ampurdan festival can boast of having offered fifty operas between its own productions and contemporary creations for which they put all the effort.
One of the legends of trip hop, the British producer Adrian Thaws, breaks his recording silence as such after six years since Fall to pieces (although it has been a period of time he has invested in exploring different projects and even parallel identities, such as Lonely guest or Theis thaws). A wait that, as the cliché goes but is true, has been worth it, since the 14 tracks that bring the brand new album to life invite you to enter its interior. One of the pillars in his day of British trip hop – it has already been 31 years since the release of the iconic and fundamental album Maxinquaye –, if anything has always characterized the work of the Bristol producer, it is his ease in changing styles and genres without causing cataclysms.
Sports rivalry has no parallel in culture, since in creativity there are usually no winners or losers and the boundaries are increasingly blurred in a culturally global world. However, today’s match between the football teams of Spain and Argentina serves as a pretext to compare, without aiming for exhaustiveness, the current situation of both nations in the literary, artistic, cinematic, theatrical, or philosophical fields.
Gaudí took Montjuïc as a reference to build the Sagrada Família: it should not exceed the height of the divine work that is the mountain, so its tallest tower, that of Jesus, measures half a meter less than the place where, among other things, the Teatre Grec is located. Two perspectives, the divine and the classical humanistic past, that this Friday converged in a sacred and profane performance, between the sacred mountain of Montserrat and the spirit of the Grec festival, combining the Baroque music of Joan Cererols, composed in the 17th century, with the present voices of Lídia Pujol and Maria Arnal.
No one would have said, a priori, that the tenor Benjamin Bernheim – pure technique, exquisite phrasing, and perfect diction – and the soprano Ermonela Yaho – all passion and vibrato – would form a colossal operatic duo. But this was proven on Friday at the opening night of the 40th edition of the Peralada Festival, an event that makes real the popular saying that 40 is the new 30, as it maintains its essence with youthful dynamism and improves with age.