Unicaja Banco and Fundación Ópera de Oviedo have signed a new agreement under which the financial institution will continue to collaborate in the promotion of this genre, supporting the program which, during the coming season, will once again bring great works and performers to the stage of the Teatro Campoamor.
Unicaja Banco’s Head of Institutional Relations and Image, Fernando Ríos, and the President of Fundación Ópera de Oviedo, Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Ovejero, have signed this agreement at the Foundation’s headquarters in Oviedo. Thanks to this agreement, Unicaja Banco maintains its status as Premium Protector within the LXXVI Oviedo Opera Season, organized by the Foundation, which will run from September 2023 to February 2024 with a total of seven titles.
The renewal of the commitment will also allow the opera institution to develop social projects and boost its programming during the season that starts with ‘Manon’, by Jules Massenet, next September, in tribute to the title that reopened the theater in 1948.
According to Fernando Ríos, ‘this collaboration responds to Unicaja Banco’s commitment to Asturias, one of its regions of origin, as well as to its support for important cultural initiatives such as those of Fundación Ópera de Oviedo’.
Juan Carlos Rodríguez-Ovejero thanked the bank for its firm commitment to be part of this cultural project: ‘Unicaja Banco has demonstrated its total commitment to us. It is an example of collaboration and vision of what a great company that is involved in and enriches its community socially and culturally should be’.
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Unicaja Banco will collaborate during the 2023/2024 season with the Oviedo Opera and its consolidated cultural impact, through its co-productions with the main theaters and festivals, its participation in the main opera forums worldwide and the numerous activities it carries out throughout the year to reinforce the Asturian opera activity and its professionals.
Massenet, Puccini, Granados, Falla, Verdi and Wagner will be played at the Campoamor
The 2023/2024 season of Oviedo Opera will start on 10 September 2023 reviving in the Campoamor theater the music played at its reopening in 1948 with the opera ‘Manon’ by Jules Massenet, in a co-production of Oviedo Opera with Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile and El Auditorio de Tenerife with stage direction by Emilio Sagi.
In October a double program will be presented with two titles by Giacomo Puccini: ‘Il tabarro’ and ‘Gianni Schicchi’. Under the musical direction of José Miguel Pérez-Sierra, one of the most important Spanish maestros, Oviedo Filarmonía in the pit and the choir of the Oviedo Opera (Coro Intermezzo), in a production of the Opéra-Théâtre de Metz with stage direction by Paul-Émile Fourny.
November will also bring a double program that will serve as a tribute to the Spanish musical, literary and artistic heritage with ‘Goyescas’ by Enrique Granados and ‘El retablo de Maese Pedro’ by Manuel de Falla. With musical direction by maestro Álvaro Albiach and the Oviedo Filarmonía in the pit, in a new production of Oviedo Opera and Teatro Cervantes de Málaga, with stage direction by Paco López.
Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La traviata’ returns in December 2023 with Ekaterina Bakanova, Leonardo Sánchez and Juan Jesús Rodríguez, in a co-production of Oviedo Opera and Festival Internacional de Peralada with stage direction by Paco Azorín.
The cycle will end with Richard Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’, with the voices of the award-winning Wagnerian specialist Samuel Sakker. Maestro Christoph Gedschold returns after his success in ‘Twilight of the Gods’ in a new production by Oviedo Opera under the signature of stage director Guillermo Amaya, with the OSPA and the choir Coro Intermezzo.