Palma de Mallorca, 1973. PhD in Musicology (2005) and award winner “Acción Magistral” (Master Action) of FAD-UNESCO-BBVA (2010). Graduate of Musicology (1996) and of Art History (1996) at the University of Salamanca.
She took doctoral courses at the University of London (1996-1998). She is a piano teacher, vocal coach, teacher in higher education of music theory and composition by the conservatories of Baleares, Salamanca, and Seville respectively. She is a civil servant since 1998 in the Music Teachers Corps of Secondary Education, Professor of Music in Secondary Education (2021) and has been a didactic music teacher in different universities.
She is the author of “Educar para ser felices” (Educate to be happy, Amazon, 2021), “Música y Educación Plástica-Comunicación Audiovisual” (Music and Audio Visual Plastic and Visual Education, Expression 12 books, Aeon Editorial, 2020), “Guías de Plástica para Educación Secundaria” (Guides of the Plastics for Secondary Education, 4 books, Editorial Aralia XXI, 2018), “Guía de Historia del Arte para Bachillerato” (Guide of Art History for the baccalaureate, Editorial Aralia XXI, 2016), “Dando la nota” (Setting the tone, 35 books, 18 CDs, educational best-seller in Spain, Pearson, 2010), “Tosca” de Giacomo Puccini (Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2007), “Música Proyecto Exedra” (Exedra Music Project, 9 books, Oxford University Press, 2004) and over a hundred articles in specialized journals, national and international congresses and concert program notes. She is a world class performer of the medieval work “El Canto de la Sibila” (Call of the Sybil, UNESCO World Intangible Heritage).
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¿Existe la ópera española? El Premio Roma y las bases de la identidad musical española ((Does the Spanish opera exist? The Rome Award and the basis of the identity of the Spanish musical)
The creation of the Music Section in the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, in 1873, profiled and designed the regenerationism of Spanish musicals. Thus, the Premio Roma (Rome Award), an award that allowed Spanish compositors to reside a triennium at the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome. The Academy committed to the premiere of an opera with a Spanish libretto in the Royal Theatre of Madrid, and to provide funding for the creation of a symphonic work, as well as the transcription en edición crítica (returning the work to its original state) of a religious work of grand Spanish polyphonists of Renaissance and Baroque. This commitment of the Academy, backed by the State, with a palpable eagerness towards regeneration that sought to push the limits of the género chico (little genre) and the zarzuela, was set to begin an operatic and symphonic repertoire of its own, in accordance with the European nationalist atmosphere of the time.
The objective of the project is to publish an unprecedented essay on the Spanish composers, residents at that time of the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome (1873-1888: Valentín Zubiaurre, Ruperto Chapí, Tomás Bretón, Felipe Espino and Emilio Serrano), an analysed catalogue of their production during their resident stay and their contribution to the founding of the Spanish opera. Furthermore, an Anthology with selected arias from their operas will be published.
“Teach, does the Spanish opera exist?” “Why do they only sing in Italian?”. These are the usual questions put forward by my Secondary and Baccalaureate level students. And yes, with the exception of a few scarce examples of Baroque and Classicism, the decisive propulsion that the opera lived at the end of the 19th century, on behalf of the State, is an unknown artistic phenomenon. These eager adolescents and an evident gap in the matter drove me to investigate, adding musicology, didactic and dissemination.
Two years earlier, with a previously emptied bibliography, the analysis of the National Library’s funds, the Foundation Juan March and the digital archives of the media of the time, I found a series of works and unanimous success with the public and critics. The research was necessary. All paths led to Rome, to the stay of the composers in the Academy and the genesis of their operas. The fellowship opened the doors to the libraries of the RAER (Spanish Royal Academy in Rome by its Spanish acronym) and the Iglesia de Santiago (Church of James) and that of Santa María de Montserrat de los Españoles (Saint Mary of Montserrat of the Spanish) and after, those paths would take the archive to the National Museum of the Almagro Theatre. With the heritage in sight, the work was taking shape. My vital Roman soundtrack will always be linked to the post-romantic and nationalist sounds of some works that deserve to be rediscovered by the grand public and loved and hummed by music lovers.
The RAER is a motor of artistic progress where the essential parts of universal life are trapped, the timeless value of beauty, freedom, justice, solidarity, democracy, and kindness. For that we may only give thanks, for the obtained opportunity, for the dreamt goal that this grant represented. This journey of the artist, the researcher constitutes a necessary didactic element to reach personal mastery and intellectual maturity.
It’s my fourth time staying in Rome. I was here as an adolescent tourist in 1994 (scholarship in the Università per Stranieri di Siena). I returned in 2001 to analyse Roman locations from the opera “Tosca” of Giacomo Puccini (doctoral thesis). In 2016 I returned to visit my brother, artist in residence in the RAER. And now I am here once again, as if it were cyclical, searched out and loved. In the RAER we welcomed in the year 2019, an unforgettable New Year’s Eve with my parents, husband, and children. Time here turns liquid and fleeting, although “El Canto de la Sibila” took shape alongside Maestro Antonio Baciero in the Portrait Hall and with Daniel Oyarzábal in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, while the young from the Liceo Español Cervantes were surprised with the impact of “Don Quijote en la música”.
Thanks to each and every one of my fellow mates, for their knowing looks, for their analogue get-togethers and for their jokes and digital suggestions through Whatsapp. The RAER, the management team and those who temporarily reside there become part of a new family, senza fine.