After exploring the traditional repertoire from a contemporary perspective in their early works, Tarta Relena delved into tragic thought, oracles, and humanity's relationship with the uncertainty of the future to write and perform És pregunta (2024), an album produced entirely by the duo formed by Helena Ros and Marta Torrella. With the maxim 'less is more' as their banner, Tarta Relena offers a set of songs that narrate impermanence and turn their live performance into a ritual. Voices are the main instrument, and the different languages they sing in bring different "worldviews" to the album. They will present it on July 31st in the garden of Casa Llorenç Villalonga in Binissalem as part of the La Lluna en Vers festival. We spoke with one of them, Marta Torrella.

Fourth and final concert of the Bellver Festival with the Orquestra Simfònica Illes Balears as the protagonist of this now consolidated event. Like an encore of the season, even though it is a different audience, this circumstance arises depending on where the activities take place. In any case, the four concerts by the ensemble at the emblematic castle are already a tradition and the venue is filled day after day. The last one was no exception and, while soloists had been the protagonists until now, for this occasion it was the British conductor Michael Francis who was in charge of putting his stamp on the concert. A British stamp, as was that of the program, made up of three composers of the same nationality and almost the same generation, such as Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. The chosen pieces were performed in chronological order, so that one could discern a small evolution of classical music in the former empire in a short period of time.

La Nit de l'Art will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary this year, becoming one of Mallorca's major cultural events. The event, which will open the exhibition season on September 19, will commemorate three decades of history after consolidating itself as a meeting point for artists, gallery owners, collectors, and industry professionals, as well as being one of the main platforms for the dissemination of contemporary art in the Balearic Islands.

They were venues of intense cultural activity and are currently closed, unused. While grandiose projects are announced, such as the transformation of the Gesa building into a major cultural infrastructure, spaces like the Assistència Palmesana, La Protectora, the Catalina Valls theater, the Balear theater, or the old Centre de Sa Nostra, all of them in Palma; the Sala Augusta in Maó; and the Dalt Vila Archaeological Museum, among others, are sleeping the sleep of the just, awaiting recovery.

Forty editions and sold out for many years is a good reason for joy and, of course, to crown the season with a Rigoletto is one of the best ways to do justice to the event. It also carries a certain risk. To achieve a good result, high-level voices are needed. Damiano Salerno as Rigoletto and Génesis Moreno as Gilda were in charge of doing so and solemnizing the anniversary. Undoubtedly, they shone far above the rest of a cast that was not bad at all. But the pivotal moments of the performance were generated when they were the great protagonists. Their duets were anthological. They began their recital with the emotional and delicate Figlia! Mio padre! They continued with the colossal Mio padre!…Tutte la feste al tempio. They elevated the tragedy with the final duet, V’ho ingannato, colpevole fui and Lassú in cielo. These three moments alone would have been enough to satisfy an audience that bid farewell to the protagonists standing, after Rigoletto's desperate lament, 'La maledizione'. This was the title Giuseppe Verdi wanted. A detail of no importance for an impeccable and implacable piece. Structurally perfect, which forces both protagonists into a detailed, meticulous, and, of course, very demanding existential metamorphosis. Both Rigoletto and Gilda, the hunchback and the daughter, evolve, both vocally and dramatically, as circumstances arise and change. Salerno and Moreno more than fulfilled their task. Génesis Moreno, two seasons ago, had already shown many of her virtues at the Teatre Principal, playing Gounod's Juliet. Therefore, her choice to star as Gilda could not have been more fitting. If the entire performance was memorable, a tremendous and colossal display of warmth, expressiveness, coloratura, breath... it left everyone more or less stunned with an unforgettable Caro nome. Nothing to say, but quite the opposite, about the interventions of Damiano Salerno, with a resounding and full voice, who with an emotional and powerful Cortigiani, vil razza dannata, rich in nuances and full of difficulties, did not make us miss any of the great singers who have interpreted the most convoluted and complex character in Verdi's production. His projection, the complicated alliance of virulence and subtlety, and impeccable diction and vocalization stand out.The diction was a small hindrance for Filip Filipovic as Duke of Mantua, considerable in volume, but uneven overall, leaving the canzonetta that has remained as the symbol of the piece, La donna è mobilie, as an anecdote. The complicated piece is, always and much more so, Ella mi fu rapita! Filip Filipovic was correct, although regarding his character, I think he was too angry in the conception of a seducer, as if he were Gualtier Maldé. On another level, but adequate, was the local performance, with Begoña Gómez as Maddalena, Irene Mas as the Duchess's page, and Cristòfol Romaguera as Count Ceprano. On the other hand, Toni Marsol was an efficient and expeditious Monterone, while for Niall Anderson's Sparafucile, one did not need to go so far. The orchestra, conducted by Oliver Díaz, and the male choir of the Teatre Principal performed well, while Elena Barbalich's staging, in the production that arrives from Pavia, Como, Brescia, Cremona, Bergamo, and Toulon, combined period costumes with very contemporary metallic structures, aesthetically effective, but which above all served to delineate with great effectiveness each space where the action takes place at each moment. A great opera evening.

The Lul·lià General Study has opened a new call for an artistic creation scholarship endowed with 4,000 euros to promote projects linked to the popular culture of the Balearic Islands. The initiative is aimed at artists over 18 years of age, without restrictions on discipline, with the aim of fostering new creative perspectives based on the cultural heritage of the Islands.

L’Aljub d'Es Baluard brought together more than 300 people this Monday to celebrate the thirteenth edition of the ARA Balears awards, an event that, year after year, recognizes initiatives, entities, and careers that contribute to a more cohesive society, committed to culture, and rooted in the territory. Institutional, political, economic, social, and cultural representatives attended the event, as well as friends and collaborators of the newspaper, led by the Vice President of the Government, Antoni Costa, and the President of ARA, Ferran Rodés.

The company Mariantònia Oliver has been distinguished with the Toni Catany de Cultura award at the ARA Balears Awards, a recognition of a career of more than thirty-five years that has decisively contributed to growing, understanding, and sharing contemporary dance in the Islands.

The Mallorcan urban music group Fades inaugurated this Friday the 44th edition of the Palma Book Fair with a markedly vindictive opening speech in defense of the Catalan language, local culture, and the role of young creators. The trio, formed by Àngel Exojo, Ferran Pi, and Vicenç Calafell, took advantage of the inaugural event to demand more institutional support for culture made in Catalan and to denounce policies that, in their opinion, contribute to weakening its public presence.

The Eroski supermarkets in Mallorca will join this Friday, May 29, in the great simultaneous singing of La Balanguera promoted by the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB). The chain will play the anthem of Mallorca over the public address system at 12 p.m. and 8 p.m. in all establishments on the island, with the aim of contributing to the commemoration of the centenary of the musical premiere of Joan Alcover's poem with music by Amadeu Vives.

The program notes of Calidoscopi, the latest creation by Estudi Zero, state that “characters are moved by absurd, violent, or profoundly human situations”. True, but it would be even more so if the conjunction were copulative instead of disjunctive. If the situations are absurd and violent, it is clear that they are undeniably very human. The caricature does not distort reality but accentuates it, so that this bold, irrational, and bizarre point makes the metaphorical drawing of the human condition arrive with more effectiveness. That the performance is composed of different small stories brings the Sans seal, in such a way that it transports us to that journey that Karl Valentin was piloting in this very room. For the occasion, several authors are listed in the roster of Calidoscopi –Esteve Soler, Juan Mayorga and Joël Pommerat–, which makes the mood of the different sketches raise the heat of each one considerably. There is no white humor. All contain a high dose of venom, in the same proportion as causticity and sarcasm, and without fear of crossing red lines.The first story, that of the man run over by a bus, about which I will say no more because it would be a spoiler, sets the tone of the performance. Black humor in its purest form. Human cruelty or lack of humanity, which in this case is the same, shines with all its splendor. That of the couple who confess to their twenty-year-old son that he was not a desired child, exponentially increases the portion of inhumanity. That of the seller of anything you can imagine is a mirror directed towards the stalls. And so on. All in all, rounded off with a musical number performed by Dominic Hull, a My way in the purest crooner style, accompanied by the rest of the cast and dressed as Fortunio Bonanova and the Glamouramas were in their glorious American years. Naturally, in such a diverse ensemble it is not easy to find the ideal point of homogeneity, but, even so, the performance treasures enough uniformity, both in the different stories and in the interpretation of the seven protagonists, who in such a marathon performance become an immense crowd of characters, always dressed very differently. Only a small caveat, the wigs are not very necessary. With the different changes of register, which are there, it is enough.

Born in Sant Joan in 1998, Júlia Febrer Bausà is part of this new generation of voices that approach poetry with their own perspective, made of word, image, and matter. Her name has begun to resonate strongly within the literary landscape after winning the Ciutat de Manacor de Poesia Miquel Àngel Riera 2025 prize with Arrel inoïda, a work that confirms the solidity of an author still young, but with an already well-defined poetic universe. This recognition has been joined this year by the Martí Dot de Poesia prize, organized by the Sant Feliu de Llobregat City Council, for the poetry collection Llum de cendra, which will be published in the autumn.

The imposing cloister of Sant Bonaventura hosted the Ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes, organized by the Toni Catany Foundation, who, as the program states, was a lover of the cultures of the Mediterranean, which he traveled and of which he left artistic testimony in countless photographic series. It is not a spectacle, it isa whole liturgical experience, as Halil Bárcena, the director of the Institute of Sufi Studies of Barcelona, explained very well shortly before initiating this Sêma: The Sufi Journey, performed by the Neva Sufi Ensemble. A group composed, on the one hand, by four musicians with their traditional instruments, the ney, the qanun, the ud, and the bendir —more or less, a flute, a trapezoidal zither, an Arabic lute, and a drum— also responsible for voicing the selam, the greeting in Turkish. On the other hand, the semazens, dancing dervishes, another four, who repeat the turns, always from left to right, with their right hand turned towards the sky and the left towards the ground, the way to establish a link between the soul and the body, between the divine and the human.Robert Graves said in the preface toThe Sufis, by the foundational thinker Idries Shah, that “Sufism represented a current of inner illumination centered on love and self-knowledge, free from oppressive dogmas”. All this was evident in this representation of the music and dances of the classical Mevlevi Sufi tradition. The venue, full; the silence, absolute, reverential. As if it were a service with all its mystical weight. The ascetic movements of the dervishes were responsible for marking the spiritual idiosyncrasy of the performance, while at the same time exhibiting a cadence that was both aesthetic and sober and cenobitic.The music, emotional and profound, with the traditional melodic phrases of the maqamat, which, as the voices chanted the names of the prophets, brought to the performance the pure and transcendent alloy between one and another. It was the feeling that it was all much more than our senses could grasp at first instance. It was a fitting and emotional tribute, but also an open door to another way of seeing and living.

While the Teatre i l’Auditori of Manacor face an important change of era with the change of manager, after almost 40 years with Tomeu Amengual at the helm, the Teatre Principal of Inca consolidates an audience that, since its inauguration in 2021, has not stopped growing. If the 2022-2023 season closed with 28,000 attendees, the 2024-2025 season ended with more than 34,000. Many of them, moreover, from Inca. “More and more people from Inca are coming to the theater, trusting the proposals we offer, but since the audience from the rest of the island is also growing, the percentages mean that the increase in local audience, which was one of the main objectives to achieve, is blurred”, explains Miquel Àngel Raió, director of the center since September 2022. “Of course, we would like to achieve a model like Manacor’s, with more than 50% local audience, but now we are operating with different percentages. We have 30% of people from Inca and 70% of people from the rest of Mallorca”, he specifies.

The Palma Book Fair will return this year to Plaça d’Espanya, where from May 29 to June 7 it will bring together 16 bookstores and more than 40 activities in its 44th edition. The program will include literary presentations, workshops, concerts, storytelling, and family activities, with a special focus on local and emerging talent.

Alcúdia once again becomes, this weekend, for the eleventh edition, a grand circus stage. From this Friday until Sunday, the municipality will host an intense program of the best shows of this discipline in its contemporary and outdoor version.

The Santa Maria del Camí Town Council this Sunday named singer Llorenç Santamaria an Illustrious Son during an extraordinary plenary session held at Ses Cases des Mestres, coinciding with the town's Fair Day. The agreement was approved unanimously by all municipal groups.

Born in 1979 in Palma. He has roots in Felanitx (on his mother's side) and Santa Margalida (on his father's side). He has lived in Madrid for years, but, in the eyes of others, he has the power of omnipresence, because he can give the impression that he is everywhere. His favorite place in the world is Portocolom. He is the middle of three siblings and if one thing characterizes him it is that he has "inexhaustible energy". It is strange that someone doesn't know who he is, because every now and then he enters everyone's dining rooms, and it's not that he does it silently: we are talking about the television presenter David Ordinas (I know more than you, The best party…), who is also a singer, composer and actor. Xisco Pericàs introduces him to us, and they have known each other since they were four years old.