The great festival of classical music

Throughout the month of March, classical music will sound louder than ever in the city. Barcelona's three main musical institutions, the Palau de la Música Catalana, the Gran Teatre del Liceu and L'Auditori, are joining forces to offer a high-voltage programme in what will be the fourth edition of the Barcelona Obertura Spring Festival, an event that brings together great artists from the international scene on these three stages.

The evenings will begin on 8 March at the Palau de la Música with a concert by the mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, one of the great interpreters of the Baroque repertoire, who, accompanied by the Bach Consort Wien and conductor Rubén Dubrovskym, will perform different arias composed by Antonio Vivaldi. The following day, the Liceu will be the venue for 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, a show with Marina Abramovic as stage director, which is at the crossroads between opera, live art, performance and video-creation. It includes some of the iconic arias that marked the artistic biography of the Greek soprano. On 10 March, cellist Nicolas Altstaedt will take the stage at L'Auditori -with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya conducted by Ludovic Morlot- to perform, among other works, Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 2, an apotheosis of musical romanticism. Altstaedt will return to L'Auditori on the 13th, with a different repertoire: he will play pieces by Dutilleux, Bach, Widmann and Kodály.

The extensive programme of the Spring Festival also includes performances by tenor Christoph Prégardien (15th at the Palau de la Música), violinist Marc Bouchkov (18th at L'Auditori), the Latvian Radio Choir (21st at L'Auditori) and soprano Sara Blanch and tenor Xabier Anduaga (24th at the Liceu), among many others. In addition, the "Ciutat de Clàssica" cycle will be held in parallel, an itinerary of free concerts by young local talents in museums, libraries, civic centres and different emblematic buildings.

Discover the full programme in this link.