The British George Benjamin, awarded in Spain for modernizing opera

The British composer George Benjamin (London, 1960) was awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award granted by the Spanish BBVA Foundation for "modernizing the operatic language" while maintaining a "rigorous and detailed form in all compositional aspects," the institution reported.

In its 16th edition, the jury awards the award to Benjamin, author of four operas, for "his extraordinary contribution and impact on contemporary creation in the fields of symphonic music, opera and chamber music."

His symphonic and chamber music has been performed by the most important orchestras and institutions in the world, but the jury - which included the artistic director of the Teatro Real, Joan Matabosch - highlights that the operas 'Into the Little Hill' (2006) , 'Written on Skin' (2009-12), 'Lessons in Love and Violence' (2015-17) and 'Picture a day like this' (2023) manage to propose "new narrative structures" and maintain "an emotional dramaturgy that connects and moves the public of the XNUMXst century.

Benjamin maintains a deep connection with Spain, and for example in his work for orchestra and choir 'Dream of the Song' (2014-2015) he uses poems by Federico García Lorca and there are also texts based on XNUMXth century Hebrew poetry from Andalusia.

This connection is partly explained because he is more than 50% Sephardic: «My family is Jewish, and my mother's family came from Spain. The original name was Abendana, and I'm pretty sure the roots come from the translation tradition of central Spain, whether Toledo or further south. So I feel a real, spiritual link [with Spain]," he himself concludes in the press release.

Josep Pons (current musical director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona) invited him to conduct the Chamber Orchestra of the Lliure Theater in Barcelona and the City of Granada Orchestra. "That gave me the exciting opportunity to see perhaps the most beautiful place in Europe, which is the Alhambra," he emphasizes.

A notable student of Olivier Messiaen, who defined him as "the most important musician since Mozart", Benjamin was the youngest composer to premiere at the BBC Proms in London, and is currently composer, conductor and Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at the King's College London.

«I wanted to compose opera from a very young age, when I was 10 years old. I dreamed of operas!, but I composed my first opera when I was about 45 years old. And the main reason is that it took me between 20 and 30 years to find the perfect collaborator: the author Martin Crimp," he says of the playwright.

As Víctor García de Gomar, secretary of the jury and artistic director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, recognizes: «We are probably talking about the most representative name in contemporary music and one that is still in a very important creative moment; Every new title that it presents in its catalog is expected by the world, especially in operas. EFE