Joyce DiDonato, at the altar of Peralada voices

Joyce DiDonato made her debut in Peralada yesterday, paying homage to the festival's voices before an audience that practically filled the Castell church. It was an emotional opening day for this 39th edition of the Empordà festival, dedicated to the memory of Miguel Suqué, the youngest member of the Suqué-Mateu family, who, over the last decade, shared responsibility for the Perelada Group's business with his siblings, Isabel and Javier. The grief over his sudden loss was echoed in the words of Borja Suqué, Javier Suqué's youngest son, who attended representing the family with Edward Reger, Isabel Suqué's husband. Borja highlighted the values ​​of his late uncle, among which he cited hard work and commitment.

“It's hard to believe that just a few months ago Miguel was right here opening the Easter edition. That's why we want the summer edition to be a place where we remember him with his smile, with that important ability of his to light up the room. Thank you, Mike, we love you so much, we will always love you,” he said, thanking the festival audience for their “attendance and attention.”

"We want to remember Miguel with his smile and his ability to light up the room," said Borja Suqué at the beginning.

In this context, the versatile and expressive DiDonato, accompanied on piano by Craig Terry – her usual accomplice –, delved into the contemplative atmosphere, beginning with a lied and reserving the opera for the second half. Debussy’s Trois chanson de Bilitis and Alma Mahler’s Fünf Lieder opened the recital, followed by Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos , to which the American mezzo-soprano gave a radical performance, with her pianissimi and her furore.

In the second half, he thrilled with the well-known “Ombra mai fu” from Handel's opera Serse , and then put the acoustics of the nave of the Carme to the test with the bel canto coloraturas of Rossini's Tancredi and the aria “Cruda Sorte” from L'italiana in Algeri , whose carefree tone he preferred to Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito . The final touch was the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen , after which he allowed himself a couple of encores, until the concert reached almost two hours: Astor Piazzolla's Lost Birds and Irving Garden's I Love Piano , in a musical key.

Her artistic proposal for this inaugural evening is perhaps the only one that doesn't embrace this edition's central theme: the garden as a paradise for creation. But the diva's return to the summer stage was greeted with a resounding round of applause.

"We're starting the festival with the Peralada signature recipe, inviting the public to lose themselves and delve into the discovery of new, open, bold, and different proposals, true to the festival's purest style," said Oriol Aguilà yesterday, the artistic director who ensures that each summer Peralada offers a unique perspective beyond the current seasons.

Peralada was a creative hub yesterday. Throughout the afternoon, rehearsals took place simultaneously for three shows, which would take place from Thursday to Saturday, the first three evenings of this summer. While DiDonato was getting a feel for the acoustics of the Carme church, in the cellar gardens, dancer and choreographer Lorena Nogal, with fellow dancer Álvaro Esteban, was putting the finishing touches on this new duet titled Terroir (Territory), for which the festival has given her carte blanche. And she did so in full sunlight, sublimating the heat, immersed in the creation of that dialogue with the earth, with the birds, with the warmth that transforms the grapes just as it transforms human beings—for that is what her Peralada exploration is all about. Today, she premieres it.

And at the Mirador, sheltered from the elements, the Genius Loci that countertenor Xavier Sabata and stage director Rafael R. Villalobos have put together was taking shape, freely adapting Jorn de Précy's book The Lost Garden, taking from it that love for the garden that can be extrapolated to life, and taking it to a totally surprising level, with the archlute of the Swede Jonas Nordberg and the viola da gamba and electronics of Liam Byrne...

Replacing the Auditori del Parc with several smaller-capacity stages has not, however, lightened the festival's machinery.