Spain, and its music and art, have long had a special appeal for
Patricia Petibon: “From an early age I was intrigued and fascinated by
Spanish culture, by the way the excessive and the subtle are
inextricably linked. It glorifies emotions with pride and, at the same
time, refinement. It’s a culture that comes from the earth, from the
people. Everything about it appealed to me, and in my early recitals I
liked to insert some Spanish songs into my American and French
programmes. Then, when I went to Madrid to sing in
Dialogues des Carmélites,
I met the stage director Emilio Sagi, and that led to my opportunity
to enter the world of zarzuela. It was Sagi who directed me in
Torroba’s
Luisa Fernanda in Vienna, where it was wonderful to
be singing alongside Plácido Domingo. I found myself surrounded by
performers from all kinds of Spanish-speaking backgrounds; they noticed
how interested I was in their culture, and that’s how we made a
connection, and I learned from real specialists. Spanish artists have a
physical sense of the music: for them, it draws its strength from the
body, and there I can’t resist making a connection with Baroque music,
with dance, of course, and extreme characters – think of Médée or
Armide. It also shares the same kind of quality of roughness, of
rawness, and voices are used to express emotions, not just to make a
lovely sound.”
“I spent a long time thinking about the programme for this
disc, creating a mixture of music, and finally I settled on one
unifying idea:
the feeling of melancholy, which is a reflection of
Spain itself. The disc is a journey through different styles, but
through folk music as well, which has a strong presence on the disc.
The theatrical element is very important, too, and at the centre is the
character of Salud in Falla’s
La vida breve. She embodies the
melancholy of the title, the loss of hope. Melancholy is a balance in
life, a sadness that binds us to death. Salud represents the darkest
side of melancholy that tends toward tragedy. But this sort of
melancholy can also depict the radiance of childhood, of joy and
laughter. What I wanted to explore through this disc was the journey
between these two poles.”
