The Orchestra della Toscana at the Centro de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música in Salamanca with Diego Ceretta and Kevin Spagnolo. This performance was truly one of the highlights of Notes in the Golden City.
There is a Salamanca that dazzles with its golden stone and university façades that tell centuries of history. And then there is the Salamanca that, in 2002, the year it was European Capital of Culture, chose to look ahead. In fact, it equipped itself with a modern and ambitious performance space: the Centro de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música.
Created with a specific mandate from the City Council, the centre was to be a home for symphonic music, opera, dance and great prose. Not just a simple auditorium, but a technically equipped facility to host international companies and local groups. The main hall, with tiered seating for around 1,000 spectators, is designed as a large reinforced concrete shell clad in wood. It also has acoustic diffusers that shape the sound and variable curtains that can adjust the reverberation depending on the ensemble.
The stage is a complete theatrical machine: elastic flooring for dance, trapdoors, a full-height stage tower with a counterweight system for quick changes, and an orchestra pit for opera and symphonic repertoire. Behind the scenes, rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms and stage-level loading bays allow touring productions to work smoothly and precisely. It is therefore a building designed to function. In fact, after more than twenty years, it continues to do so with efficiency and vision.
The opening of the centre marked a turning point in the city’s cultural life, complementing the reopening of the Teatro Liceo and expanding the offering beyond the university lecture halls and naves that for centuries had hosted sacred and ancient music. Since 2005, it has been one of the hubs of the Festival Internacional de las Artes de Castilla y León. It hosts concerts, dance, prose and major international productions.
This contemporary space, designed to enhance every nuance of sound, is now hosting a concert by the Orchestra della Toscana. It also features Diego Ceretta on the podium and Kevin Spagnolo on the clarinet.
The programme spans classicism and romanticism:
- Felix Mendelssohn – Das Märchen von der schönen Melusine, overture
- Carl Maria von Weber – Concerto for clarinet and orchestra No. 2, Op. 74
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No. 39, K. 543
From the fairy-tale and transparent atmospheres of Mendelssohn to the brilliant virtuosity of Weber’s concerto, to the formal balance and expressive intensity of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, the evening brings together classical elegance and romantic tension.
Bringing this repertoire to Spain means much more than just performing a programme: it is a gesture of openness, an encounter between traditions, a concrete way of taking music beyond borders. In a city that has chosen to invest in culture as a driving force for identity, the Orchestra della Toscana adds its voice to a story that continues to resonate. This happens night after night.
For information about the programme -> bit.ly/Ceretta-Spagnolo_Salamanca
