The composer Marisa Manchado (Madrid, 68 years old) and the soprano Yolanda Auyanet (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 54 years old) have been awarded today with the 2024 National Music Awards in the categories of composition and performance, respectively. These awards, granted annually by the Ministry of Culture through the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM), are worth 30,000 euros each.
The jury has awarded the award to Manchado for his opera The Regent, which he composed two decades ago with a libretto by Amelia Valcárcel, although it was not brought to the stage until last year, in a production by the Teatro Real and the Teatro Español in Madrid. In its argument, the jury that awarded the prizes highlights that it is “an updated reading of a classic of universal literature, through which it gives voice to an iconic female character, which underlines the composer’s long commitment to equality”, With this work, the ruling adds, “he has contributed to the expansion of Spanish musical heritage, highlighting the integration of innovative and hybrid styles.” The Regent Thus, according to the jury, it joins “a corpus of more than 150 works, including vocal music, chamber music, symphonic music and other genres, a career in which the search for new formats and languages has always been present, and in which “research and interaction between different artistic and academic disciplines have prevailed, in addition to a constant pedagogical commitment.”
The production premiered last year, with musical direction by Jordi Francés and staging by Bárbara Lluch, received great praise from critics. “It is modern music that does not ask permission to be so nor does it proclaim any manifesto. A feat, undoubtedly, that places Marisa Manchado in a very high honor in today’s contemporary Spanish opera,” wrote Jorge Fernández Guerra in EL PAÍS.
For its part, the jury has awarded the award to Yolanda Auyanet “for her applauded debut in the role of Tosca at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville in 2023, with which she has expanded a three-decade career marked by the most demanding roles. feminine, from Gilda or Violeta to the bel canto singers Norma, Lucia de Lammermoor, Isabel I of Roberto Devereux or Lucrezia Borgia, and where he has demonstrated his enormous virtuosity and interpretive ability.” Furthermore, he highlights that “the quality of his technique and stage charisma have connected with the audiences of the main national and international theaters in a career in which he has also defended the zarzuela repertoire with titles such as Bread and bulls, The saffron rose o The barber of Lavapiés”.
Marisa Manchado studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Madrid and completed her training as a composer first with Carmelo Bernaola and Luis de Pablo, in Spain, and then at the University of Paris VIII with Horacio Vaggione and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Franco Donatoni and B. Ferneyhough. Laboratory of Informatics and Musical Electronics (LIEM) of the Center for the Diffusion of Contemporary Music (CDMC): an inclusive instrument for electroacoustic creation, which obtained the qualification of outstanding cum laude and with which it won the SGAE Foundation Award for the best doctoral thesis 2021.
Yolanda Auyanet studied at the Superior Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and later at the Liceu Conservatory of Barcelona. He debuted in Italy at 23 with bohemian (in the role of Musetta). After her debut in Bari, she played the character of Gilda de Rigoletto in Las Palmas and Violetta de La Traviata at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, with enormous critical and public success. Later, he repeated these roles in Lima and Sicily and incorporated Lucia di Lammermoor to his repertoire, with a concert version in Bogotá. In 1996, Alfredo Kraus invited her to participate in his tribute concert at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, where she performed fragments of Doña Francisquita and of Werther. Since 1997 his career has focused above all on Italy, without losing sight of the rest of Europe and expanding his repertoire with operas by Mozart.
The winners in the previous edition were Juan Manuel Cañizares in interpretation and Eduardo Soutullo in composition.