2009 – Russia: Saint Petersburg

 

THE CONQUEST OF SAINT PETERSBURG

 

Neither Napoleon or the German army did so: St. Petersburg resisted. But it happened until August 2009, when the “Coral Santa Lucia de Llodio” managed to succeed and put at their feet the cultural capital of Russia.

Between 31st July and 5th August we act in different venues throughout the city, within the VII International Festival of Choral Art, “The Singing World”, Thanks to the support received from the City of Llodio and enterprise JEZ Railway Systems. And that was possible despite all the difficulties that we had on this trip: last minute changes in flight shcedules, which forced us to make the movement into two groups and different days; stolen passports two days prior to travel; flights returning to the airport of departure by “technical problems” an son on. All these problems forced us, for example, to be represented by a choir consisting of “15 emergency singers”, in the Opening Concert of the Choral Festival.

All concerts offered and excellent level, taking into account that we share the stage with choirs from Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Italy, Israel, Czech Replublic, Russia… and so up to 36 choirs from around the world, all of great performance quality.

The truth is that the preparation made in the previous months and the selection of works made by our conductor Beatriz Zurimendi contributed substantially to this success. Among all concerts, the most remarkable one was undoubtedly the concert achieved in the Capella theater, specifically designed to develop this kind of performances, and considered the most important one of Russia for this purpose. According to our conductor words, it was a great concert, at the same level than the one offered in 2005 at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.

These successes were endorsed by the organization of the festival and international juries as important as the French Alain Charron, present at the festival, and the other participating choirs, so we returned from Russia with many compliments and invitations to take part in various international festivals. As an anecdote, the organization of the festival told us that we were the only choir with a loyal audience, becouse many people followed us in the six concerts in the city.

0001 invitation Santa Lucia

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