The Festival Internacional de Santander (FIS) is one of Spain's oldest music festivals. Each year, during the month of August it presents two to three operas as well as performances from visiting ballet and theatre companies, solo recitals, and choral, symphonic, and chamber music concerts. Its largest and main performing space is the Palacio de Festivales on the Calle Gamazo in Santander. However, performances are also held in fifty churches, cloisters, and parks both in Santander and in smaller towns in the Cantabria region.
Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country mostly located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory also includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country (Morocco). Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are also part of Spanish territory. The country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean.
Opera is a form of theatre in which music has a leading role and the parts are taken by singers, but is distinct from musical theater. Such a "work" is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor.
Ballet is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology. It has been globally influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres and cultures. Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures and as a result, the art has evolved in a number of distinct ways. See glossary of ballet.
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From 1952 to 1990 the festival's main performance space was a gigantic tent in Santander's Plaza Porticada. The final performance there was a concert by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Mstislav Rostropovich on August 30, 1990.
Mstislav Leopoldovich "Slava" Rostropovich was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He is considered to be one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century. In addition to his interpretations and technique, he was well known for both inspiring and commissioning new works, which enlarged the cello repertoire more than any cellist before or since. He inspired and premiered over 100 pieces, forming long-standing friendships and artistic partnerships with composers including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutosławski, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Norbert Moret, Andreas Makris, Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten.
Upon its completion in 1991, the Palacio de Festivales, became the festival's new home. It was inaugurated with a performance by the King's Consort of Handel's oratorio, Joshua . The building was designed by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza. Its main auditorium, the Sala Argenta, is noted for its transparent and natural-sounding acoustics and has a seating capacity of 1670. Unusually, the backdrop of its stage is a large window looking out onto the Bay of Santander. [1] The auditorium is named in honour of the Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta, who played a major role in the establishment of the festival.
Joshua is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel. It was composed in a month, between 19 July 1747 and 19 August 1747, six months before the beginning of the oratorio season, and is Handel's fourth oratorio based on a libretto by Thomas Morell. The oratorio premiered on 9 March 1748 at the Covent Garden Theatre, London. Joshua is based on the Biblical story of Joshua as the leader of the Children of Israel. The story follows the Israelites from their passage over the Jordan River into Caanan and through the Battle of Jericho. The work also includes a love story elaborated from a few hints in the Biblical narrative between Achsah, Caleb's daughter and Othniel, a young soldier.
Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza was a Spanish architect and influential practitioner of the modernist movement in Spain.
The Bay of Santander is both a comarca of Cantabria and the largest estuary on the North coast of Spain, with an extension of 22.42 km² 9 km long and 5 km wide. Due to the influence of Santander and its metropolitan area, nearly half of the population of the region is gathered around it, which makes the anthropic pressure on this area of water quite notable.
The festival had its beginnings in 1948 as a programme providing cultural entertainment to the foreign students at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo. By 1952 it had become a fully fledged international music festival with José Manuel Riancho as its first Director. José Luis Ocejo, a noted conductor and founder of the Coral Salvé de Laredo, has been its Director since 1979. [2] Many of the festival's performances are broadcast live on Spanish National Radio (RTVE). The RTVE-Música label has issued eight of these performances on CD, including the 2003 production of Simon Boccanegra and the Berlin Philharmonic's 2004 concert of works by Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven. [3]
The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. is the state-owned public corporation that assumed the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service formerly called Ente Público Radiotelevisión Española in 2007. RTVE is the largest audiovisual group in Spain broadcasting in the Spanish language. Since January 2010 it is financed exclusively by public subsidies.
Simon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra (1843) by Antonio García Gutiérrez, whose play El trovador had been the basis for Verdi's 1853 opera, Il trovatore.
The Berlin Philharmonic is a German orchestra based in Berlin. It is traditionally ranked in the top handful of orchestras in the world, distinguished amongst peers for its virtuosity and compelling sound. The orchestra’s history has always been tied to its chief conductors, many of whom have been authoritative and controversial characters, such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan.
Amongst the many distinguished conductors, musicians and singers who have appeared at the Festival Internacional de Santander over the years are: Zubin Mehta, Sir Georg Solti, Riccardo Muti, Arthur Rubinstein, Alicia de Larrocha, Daniel Barenboim, Diletta Rizzo Marin, Montserrat Caballé, Teresa Berganza, Samuel Ramey, Juan Diego Flórez, Mirella Freni, José Carreras, and Plácido Domingo, who made his Kirov Opera debut in the title role of Otello when the company performed at the festival in 1992.
Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music. He is currently music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Riccardo Muti, is an Italian conductor. He holds two music directorships: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. Previously he held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Muti has been a prolific recording artist and has received dozens of honours, titles, awards and prizes. He is particularly associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi.
Arthur Rubinstein was a Polish American classical pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music written by a variety of composers and many regard him as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He has been described as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. He played in public for eight decades.
