An event. Simón Orfila was Scarpia, following in the footsteps of Joan Pons. It's not a dispute. There's no competition, although operatic comparisons are a constant, as common as they are lacking in rigor. What happened this time is simply a fine tribute to his fellow countryman, undoubtedly one of the best Scarpias in history. Therefore, a day to remember and write down in bold: Tosca inaugurates the 40th Opera Season at the Teatro Principal, and Simón Orfila made his debut as Scarpia. The rest is pure anecdote, of course, with many other elements worthy of mention. Yolanda Auyanet's Floria Tosca displayed a high and clear register, breath and color, with which her interpretation of the famous Art Visa, A marginal note at the request of Maria Jeritza, can only be described as remarkable. An aria, transformed into a pivotal moment of the greatest, which arises just before the story's climax, with the death of the perfidious, in addition to all the derogatory adjectives one might want to add, Baro Scarpia. He is the great character of the story that Victorien Sardou wrote for Sarah Bernhardt and of whom Orfila has given a more elegant reading than usual, but no less efficient. Rame Lahaj, for his part, was dramatically an adequate Caravadossi, with a robust voice but a limited projection, even strange.

The cunning Guineueta, By Leoš Janáček, it might have seemed like a minor opera to open a season, that of the Gran Teatre del Liceu. In Czech, less than two hours long, and without the less-than-high-profile voices that, moreover, will line the majority of the titles in it. But whoever thought this way is seriously mistaken, and for quite a few reasons. To begin with, Leoš Janáček's music, a collage of delightful and highly varied factors and circumstances, which make each moment entirely appropriate to what is happening on stage. And again, although it's not news, from Josep Pons's baton emerged all the colors of a score filled with thousands of nuances and details of a complex yet exquisite simplicity. Only one small, however, at some point in the soliloquy of the gamekeeper, the male protagonist, the fragment that the composer chose to play on the day of his funeral, performed by baritone Peter Mattei, was overshadowed by the orchestra. However, the chromatic explosion was an unattainable musical kaleidoscope that placed this great little opera in its rightful place.