Let’s take a look at the anecdote of Anegats farewell concert on October 12 at Velòdrom Illes Balears (the anecdote), formerly known as Palma Arena. I wish the best memories to those of Son Servera. It makes no difference to me whether the farewells are sincere or, on the contrary, temporary, because marketing has already accustomed us to the announcement of a departure then a new start. This is something recurring that we have seen lately, and as the local shows, with Font Antonia, who took a supposedly permanent break in December 2013 and decided last year to return to the stage in the middle of the crowd.
It happened again with Llorenç SantamariaTHE iconic voice of Z-66 who said goodbye to us last year and who will nevertheless return on February 21 on this same stage. I stopped believing, at first glance, in goodbyes. In fact, I myself returned to the radio to say goodbye for good with a review of live entertainment for just one season. I’m going for the third.
What annoys me is the radical left’s obsession with erasing the Palma Arena, which they call Velòdrom Illes Balears because they couldn’t support a space they were incapable of building and under the pretext that she was part of the corruption of the PP during the era of Jaume Mataswhich is still absolute nonsense. To erase the name of Palma Arena and fall into the immense mediocrity of Velòdrom Illes Balears is to ignore everything that happened there between 2007 and before the pandemic, even in the era of the radical left of which we know now that she has committed very serious irregularities.
I will allow myself a brief inventory of what happened at the Palma Arenaas an indisputable pedigree of a a place which gave us nights of great emotion that the radical left has no right to silence us.
From 2007 with the exhibition of Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal on the mixed dirt-grass track. A year later, we experienced gala evenings hosted by Woody Allen and Diana Kroll. The year 2009 brought us three equally luxurious visits: Plácido Domingo, Leonard Cohen and Status Quo. Until before the pandemic he visited us at the height of his splendor Cirque du Soleillater disappeared due to the deadly Covid 19 crisis.
Is it really possible to bury the name and legacy of the Palma Arena when events that have not been repeated have happened there? It is up to the Anegats to remember during their farewell for the concert at the Velòdrom Illes Balears or as part of the great legacy of the Palma Arena. Let them know.
But life goes on – the Pact is ostracized – and then the Palma Arena remains silent, while the The Teatre Principal de Palma prepares to launch its 39th Opera Season (incidentally, approved by Maria Antonia Munar who was known by the nickname MAM, in the years of corruption and prison), with a singular Turandot in which the main couple is the same as the one who was at the end of last year at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona: the English soprano Catherine Foster and the Spanish tenor Alexandre Royboth in central roles, Turandot and Kalaf. The replacement of Turandot in Palma ten years later, is due to the fact that the Puccini yeardied exactly a century ago.
He Turandot that will be played at the Main on 21, 23, 25 and 27 is a Own production of the Main Theater and with the tickets already sold out.
The staging has two incentives. On the one hand, includes the last ten minutes, consisting of Franco Alfano. Puccini’s score was left unfinished, due to his death, just as he was preparing to write the aria. Princess of Death of the final scene. As usual, the performance will be briefly suspended, once the notes written by Giacomo Puccini have been completed, to resume the action with Alfano’s notes.
The other incentive concerns the scenography, accompanied by the efforts of director Alessandra Premoli, to pay a sincere tribute to Puccini. What was this tribute about? Well, nothing less than save the chinese music boxthe original that the composer heard and which inspired him to create the opera Turandot. This Chinese box, which in the middle of the last century was the subject of BBC and RAI documentaries, was missing for almost half a century until the stubbornness of Alessandra Premoli found it in the city from Turin.
At the Principal de Palma, before the curtain rises, images of this discovery will be projected including the original sound of this box. The director of the Teatre Principal Miquel Martorell will travel to Turin next week to participate in the plenary session of Òpera XXI, carrying the file under his arm. Turandot as unique as ours.
But there is more. Premoli and his set designer Nathalie Deana designed a set that perfectly reflects the Chinese music box, making the performers parts of the machine.. We will see how the visual effect of this idea is resolved in the four functions 21 to 27.
Speaking of Chinese music boxes, the research process initiated by the director led to contacting a museum in the United States, where another relevant music box, also heard by Puccini, is kept, so that some of its melodies were used in Madame Papillon. Hopefully this original production of Turandot can be broadcast in European theaters in the same format as the Main.
