Few things are more Barcelonan than kicking off the most gluttonous intellectual-social week of all time with an explosion of Central European gravity and full-on melancholy. How about a Mahler? A First Symphony for the penultimate Monday of May while the city prepares for Bad Bunny , his little house, his friends, and all his girlfriends, haha, yes, he has many girlfriends, in his highly anticipated return to the European scene on Friday? That’s how it was. That’s how it has been.
Read more Bad Bunny, the Great Phenomenon of Puerto Rico (★★★★✩)
Because renewing our vote of distrust towards explicit happiness (which here in Barcelona we dodge more than cruise ships with wristbands) and closing the Ibercamera cycle, Monday night fell with the Titan at the Auditori for the delight of a Eduardo Mendoza literally fed up with the fight he invented with dragons and knights and religiously focused on the Latin intensity of Andrés Orozco-Estrada leading the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne.
Ernest Urtasun, Jaume Collboni, Albert Dalmau and Alícia Romero danced with Bad Bunny
Attending to (and understanding) those cacophonies, dissonances, and fermatas for which the smart ones of the time labeled Mahler’s masterpiece mediocre 137 years ago, at the Pau Casals the usual priests of cultivated emotion – a squad of gentlemen, ladies, and sirs who surely could tell you more about the Austro-Hungarian than about his closest relatives – felt much calmer. Natàlia Garriga and Josep Oliu and Xavier Bru de Sala and Josep Cuní almost cried with that First Symphony missed by the delegation of presumed music lovers equally interested in the post-romantic composition sent to Sant Felip Neri by the premiere, yes, another, of the organ by Montserrat Torrent . Although the roar of the monumental beast so gothically awaited (for six decades!) did not convince the community of experts equally, what a pity!, it was worth the family photo of Salvador Illa , Jaume Collboni and Sònia Hernández , who as good politicians know well that at certain moments there is no better filter than culture.
And then Tuesday came and Verdi arrived. And the Palau de la Música. Ah, the Palau. In the bowels of that modernist delirium that Domènech i Montaner drew as if he had gotten caught up in a long tasting of whatever with the wildest Venetian jeweler, Daniele Gatti turned the night into something much more scandalous than a funeral pyre. With the Dies irae falling with sensational operatic violence on the old modernist doors and its president Joaquim Uriach acting as the perfect host he is, the box could only hold its breath for a long time. For an hour and thirty minutes in which (again) Sònia Hernández, nailed with emotion in her VIP seat next to Joan Oller, Lluís Domènech and Emili Ros, missed the theatrical intensity with which Joan Francesc Marco fit the “libera me” implored by the soprano. And, ah, the Palau, which was on fire, vibrated in unanimous applause for Gatti. And for Eleonora Buratto, Elina Garanca and Benjamin Bernheim and, although also, but not as much, for Riccardo Zanellato, and more and above all, for Xavi Puig and that Orfeó of his in total state of grace. Albert Guinovart, Oriol Aguilà, Miquel Martí and Ingrid Viñals. A Ignacio García Nieto, Xavier Ayén, David Uclés (from so much human warmth he had already lost his beret in the Liber scriptus ), Jaume Ripoll, Justo Barranco and Nacho Feijoo shouted “ole” and clapped after that rigorous live broadcast for Mezzo and Medici.tv. Final Champions League vibe.
“Libera me,” the soprano had pleaded, but in Barcelona no one really wants to be freed from their sins. They don’t even demand good acoustics. Just ask Benito Antonio , who, oh, was already around here on Thursday when the Lliure tragically staged Contra Antígona before all our who’s who in theater (Julio Manrique, Carme Portaceli, Anna Barrachina and Abel Folk) who applauded the courage of the 14 volunteers, Magí Camps one of them, who dared to get on stage for the choir.
Read more Barça- Lyonnes: How the talented blaugrana empire imposed itself on Kang’s wallet
It happened while Agustí Barnadas presided over the solidarity dinner of the Kalida Foundation and the mayor, who like Barcelona never stops, paid tribute in the Saló de Cent to the eighties culinary revolution of Rosa Esteva with bites and stabs. Crazy day in which, moreover, Rabat Casa Codina (in a private event by Jordi Rabat for Vacheron Constantin) and Bulgari gathered a selection of their most beautiful people who know how to get their glass taken away before having to ask for another.
And from there, finally, the already more than handsome and much more than VIPs closed the week at the Stadium losing (or winning) all intellectuality with hip shakes before a Bad Bunny dressed first in modest Zara, then in feisty Adidas, and finally as a postmodern prophet on an Arctic expedition, to move (is it the third time?) Collboni and Minister Ernest Urtasun . And Albert Dalmau, Alícia Romero, Mónica Martínez, Toni Aira, Jordi Basté, Eugènia Gay, Jordi Martí, Jess González, Pau González, Janet Sanz, Albert Ortas… and Pino Sagliocco, a regular in the box, of course, as well as the dancing Antonia Dell’Atte and Elena Font, who didn’t take their eyes off the badbunner little house packed with so much Barça. There Yamal and his girlfriend Inés shone like stars, and Marc Giró was sensational in his role as the last-minute surprise and high voltage before the no less stellar appearance of Bad Gyal.
Craaaazy. Yes sir. The girls are fierce and the rentrée of Benito Antonio and his “damn beast” from New York couldn’t have been more atomic. Their dances made us all a bit silly (there was even a marriage proposal in the box) and elevated the Olympic ring forever as the universal capital of music. It’s the global center. The Arena of Arenas. Yes. Bad Bunny has many girlfriends. Haha. Yes. He has many girlfriends. Today he has one, tomorrow another. But he has reserved Barcelona his first two European nights in a more than post-romantic plan. Haha. Yes. Many girlfriends.
Read more Josep Sánchez Llibre: “To have an opinion on productivity, you have to step into the company”
