Opera XXI celebrates the "southern" perspective on Wagner at a gala held in Valencia.

This Tuesday, Valencia's Palau de les Arts became the set for the Ópera XXI Awards, the so-called Goya Awards of opera, which each year bring together the Iberian and Latin American opera world in a different theater across Spain. This 7th edition was hosted by the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia, with a ceremony directed by Emilio López at the Teatre Martín i Soler and hosted by the popularizer Ramon Gener, who proved to be at ease in the role of presenter, even extending the ceremony to a duration of two and a half hours. The 2026 gala, to be held at the Liceu, promises, in any case, to be shorter.

Barcelona-born baritone Jan Antem was the first to come up to collect an award for best young singer. He expressed his gratitude by encouraging other young people not to give up and singing the aria "Bella e di sol Vestita" from Donizetti's opera Maria di Rohan , which he performed against the backdrop of Jesús Torres's opera Tránsito . Pianist Stanislav Angelov performed inside these superimposed structures throughout the evening.

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It would be the first of 17 awards, the crowning glory of which, for best production, would go to the Teatro Real for Wagner's Mastersingers of Nuremberg, a comedy. A "wonderful performance by that comedic genius, Laurent Pelly," as Joan Matabosch, artistic director of the Teatro Real, later commented, "which ultimately proves that this nearly six-hour Wagner is still a comedy, even though when some Central European directors stage it, they forget that it is."

The gala organized by the Ópera XXI association, made up of 25 theaters and opera seasons in Spain, plus the Colón in Buenos Aires and the Sao Carlos in Lisbon, recognized for the second consecutive year categories considered technical such as video creation, with Joan Fontcuberta thanking Víctor García de Gomar for the commission for Winterreise from the Liceu, and lighting, which went to Albert Faura for various works at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, the Zarzuela in Madrid, the Campoamor in Oviedo or the Calderón in Valladolid… “When I started as a young man they told me that being a lighting designer was not a profession you could make a living from, but my vocation doesn’t understand negatives,” he stated.

She also received the Alfons Flores Award for her now iconic set design for Calixto Bieto's Carmen , which premiered in 1999 at Peralada and later rebuilt at the Liceu. It is still in demand today at theaters around the world and has been revived at the Gran Teatre. And Gabriela Salaverri expressed her gratitude for the award for best costume design—"I feel recognized and admired"—for her Verbena de la paloma at the Tomás Bretón Theater in Logroño.

The Valencian mezzo Silvia Tro Santafé and the Menorcan baritone Simón Orfila collected the awards for best singer in the female and male categories. The former did so for her role as Elisabetta in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda , which she performed at home, the Palau de les Arts. "This talent is also a responsibility," she said, "we transmit culture, sensitivity, values, and emotions; we create intangible experiences." She concluded by encouraging new generations interested in singing, as "there is so much to do and contribute."

Orfila, for his part, was celebrated for various roles, including Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen at the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Baluarte Foundation, but also for Verdi's Nabucco at the Maestranza, Aida in A Coruña, and Jaume Pahissa's Gal·la Placídia at the Zarzuela. In his thanks, he included Alfredo Kraus, "my teacher and mentor who didn't hesitate to believe in me," Miquel Lerín, "for shaping my career," and "my people of Alaior," he added, before starring in the second performance of the evening, "Infelice, e tuo credevi," from Verdi's opera Ernani .

Some people expressed their gratitude via video messages, such as Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, who won Best Foreign Artist for his Spanish debuts in John Adams's Antony & Cleopatra at the Liceu and for the aforementioned Maestrosingers at the Real. Also absent were Pablo Heras-Casado, "Best Musical Director," who recorded from Bayreuth, where he began rehearsals for Parsifal for another summer, and Calixto Bieito, "Best Stage Director," for Aribert Reimann's opera Lear . "Thank you to the Teatro Real for opening up to repertoires that move us," he said. "This award belongs to the entire team, and I accept it not as a point of arrival but as an incentive to continue taking risks."

Composer Jesús Torres also thanked Matabosch for commissioning the opera Tránsito , which won the Impulso a la Creación Contemporánea Award. This story of a Civil War exile, based on a text by fellow exile Max Aub, later attracted the attention of Jesús Iglesias of Les Arts and José Luis Rivero of the Tenerife Auditorium. "I'm grateful for this award; the genre needs to be updated, with texts that speak to us about the present or the recent past, that challenge us."

Mirna Lacambra and her Escola d'Òpera de Sabadell deserved the award for dissemination, an accolade that Ramon Gener himself would have liked to present—"Mirna is my third mother, the second is Victoria de los Ángeles"—for their participation in this school's first academy in 1996. But Celestino Varela, general director of Ópera de Oviedo, who attended twice, at the second and third editions of the Escola de Sabadell, won. "I boarded a train in Avilés and arrived in Sabadell 17 hours later," he recalled, hugging Lacambra afterward.

Nuria Espert expressed her gratitude via video for the honorary award given to her for her career,

Ramon Agenjo, director of the Damm Foundation, took the stage to accept the award for best patronage initiative before the honorary ceremony began. In this section, Nuria Espert expressed her gratitude via video for the lifetime achievement award, and Miquel Lerín did the same with the award given to an institution, in this case, the Viñas Competition. "There are 15,000 singers we've tried to help, and some have gone on to great careers," he noted.

Gal·la Placídia, the Catalan-language opera revived in 2024 at the Zarzuela Palace, 110 years after its premiere at the Liceu, was awarded the Lyric Heritage Prize, a prize jointly collected by the president of Ópera XXI and director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, Isamay Benavente, and the deputy director of the Music Department at Inaem, Ana Belén Faus. "We need more partners to recover heritage," argued the former.

The memorial service honored the recently deceased Miguel Suqué, vice president of the Perelada Group.

The In Memoriam, with seven voices from the Centre de Perfeccionament of the Palau de Les Arts performing Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine , honored the recently deceased Miguel Suqué, vice president of the Perelada Group, as well as Marisa Paredes, soprano Enriqueta Tarrés, composer Eduardo Polonio, and set designer Pablo Huerres. The victims of the Dana were also honored.

Among the more than 300 attendees at the gala, which was streamed live on the OperaVision platform, were nearly 100 members of OLA, the Latin American Opera network holding its assembly in conjunction with Opera XXI. This spirit of unity took shape at the ceremony when Mexican soprano Zayra Ruiz sang a fragment of the zarzuela Cecilia Valdés, leading into the presentation of the award for best Latin American production. This Tosca , directed by Francisco Krebs, was staged at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile.