Fantastic flamenco / Guitar master / A debut

When Instituto Cervantes Director Jose Rodriguez informed the RCBC theater audience that David Perez Almagro was only 25 years old, and that he had begun performing in public at 15, I readily presumed he was flamenco’s enfant terrible. He must still be perfecting his art, but to what fantastic heights he has already taken it to!

Almagro appeared with partner Rocio Palacios — each also danced solo — with Inma Rivero and Rosario Amador alternately wailing cante hondo and jointly palm-clapping, and Ruben Romero fervidly strumming the guitar. The ensemble was tightly integrated, the singers evoking the mood of each dance, their palm-clapping and the guitarist’s thrusts keeping perfect time with the dancers’ finger-snapping, particularly with their taconeos and zapateados.

Small and slim, Almagro danced with magisterial, magnetic elan, his arresting movements ending abruptly in electrifying poses, his precise, dazzling, mind-boggling footwork creating the thunder of a hundred hooves or, if you will, the terrifying rattle of machinegun fire. Guitarist Romero, for his part, was conveying vigor, zest and brio.

The tall, svelte, ravishing Señorita Palacios twirled her manton with sensuous grace and startling speed, or held the flouncy train of her gown to heighten visual appeal while she did her arresting footwork.

The spectacular Almagro performed solo again, sending the audience spellbound. As the program ended, I jestingly told Don Jaime Zobel de Ayala, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you dance,” to which he wittily replied: “Tomorrow, I take lessons.” How riveting — indeed, how  awesomely fiery, intense, and passionate the flamenco dancing was!

Add to the world-class artists of the Spanish Festival Miguel Trapaga, a superb guitarist who traced 200 years of Spanish guitar music in less than two hours at the RCBC theater, showing the fascinating development of guitar works by composers born from 1774 to 1896, and ending with Albeniz’s well-loved Sevilla.

Trapaga’s amazing dexterity encompassed the delicate, the robust, the slow and languid, the intense and rapid. His nuances were of the subtlest and most sensitive. The Spanish music’s distinctive flavor and the Spanish guitar’s distinctive qualities, so magnificently illustrated by Trapaga, enthralled all evening.

Young tenor Sherwin K. Sozon, who was presented by his mentor Mamerto Villaba in a debut recital at F. Santiago Hall, won admirers at once for his engaging personality. He interpreted widely-ranging arias of various periods — e.g. Astarte by Bononcini, Rinaldo by Handel, the oratorio St. Paul by Mendelssohn.

With the clearest articulation of Italian, German, Swedish, Spanish and Tagalog songs, he sustained top notes and long lines securely while strongly emphasizing emotional content. The four characters in Schubert’s Der Erlkonig (The Erl King) were eloquently delineated through varied tonal colors and expressive inflections.

In the arias from Verdi’s Rigoletto, Puccini’s Tosca and Massenet’s El Cid, Sozon’s powers surfaced impressively — a firm, ringing, forceful voice, interpretive ability and control of volume. In the encore, Canio’s Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci — the aria so closely identified with Enrico Caruso — the young tenor poured out heart-rending pathos as he portrayed the clown who, though making people laugh, is actually grieving. The thunderous applause was followed by another encore, the popular Torna a Sorrento. Pianist Albert Jude Areopagita wholly complemented Sozon’s renditions with remarkable skill and keen sensitivity.

Corrections: The tyranny of the deadline, led me to write in my review of “Musica y Danza en la Corte Real” that ballet started in the Italian court. It began in the French court, the French codifying it. Ingrid’s encore was the third movement, not the entire Concerto in G Minor by Mendelssohn.