Coinciding with European Music Day, on June 21, 2024, at 1:00 p.m., the auditorium of the Fundación Telefónica in Madrid hosted the presentation of the DIDONE Project, an innovative musicological study dedicated to the recovery of 18th-century operatic repertoire, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme of the European Union.
The event, streamed live, featured prominent experts in the field of musicology, including Álvaro Torrente, Professor of Musicology, Director of the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (ICCMU), and Principal Investigator of the DIDONE Project; Ana Llorens, musicologist and scientific director of the initiative; José Antonio Montaño, conductor, researcher, and key member of the team; and Eva Sandoval, musicologist and Director of Radio Clásica at Radio Nacional de España. Together, they presented the progress and goals of this ambitious research, which, over the course of five years, has brought together the efforts of a multidisciplinary team of 30 musicologists and other professionals. During this time, more than 3,000 arias from 200 18th-century operas have been analyzed, 90% of which were previously unpublished. These arias have been digitized and classified according to composer, the emotion they convey, their tonality, and the instruments used. Thanks to this meticulous work, they are now available to the public through the digital platform: www.arias.didone.eu
The presentation concluded with the performance of several arias recovered in the project, by Jommelli, Sarro, and Graun, conducted by José Antonio Montaño with his period-instrument ensemble, La Madrileña, along with mezzosoprano Lucía Caihuela.