Conxita Badia, the voice and memory of a Casals muse

Conxita Badia (Barcelona, 1897-1975) entered this world with courage, personality, artistry, and discretion. And with a deep commitment to music and teaching. She was a bit of everything: a soprano, actress, composer, pianist trained with Enric Granados—who mentored her in her adolescence—a muse of Pau Casals, a friend of Robert Gerhard and Eduard Toldrà, and a teacher of later figures such as Montserrat Caballé.

“She was a unique person,” said maestro Antoni Ros-Marbà, who met her when she was older. “She wasn't an improvised singer; she was very cultured. And during her time in Argentina, she was in close contact with Manuel de Falla…”

As we mark the half-century since the death of Concepció Badia i Millàs, any sketch is insufficient. At the beginning of his biography, the poet and music lover Joan Alavedra acknowledged that in the musical life of the early 20th century, Badia was "an essential personality, just as Lluís Millet with the Orfeó Català or Pau Casals could have been."

And despite being an "artist of unique quality, both for her voice and diction, as well as for her extraordinary expressive gift," her image remains more difficult than that of her male colleagues, some of whom appreciated her in all her facets, in addition to having her as their featured soprano.

“Why are you leaving, Conchita?” Manuel de Falla asked her when, in 1946, she decided that, after seven years in Argentina, it was time to end her exile and return to Spain with her family.

–Well, maybe because of my daughters or maybe fate.

–You must not provoke destiny – Falla warns him.

Three days later, the author of El amor brujo died in the Argentine city of Alta Gracia.

She sang for Macià with her daughter on the president's lap, or woke up Pau Casals singing 'El cant dels ocells'...

For Badia, the shock of losing the man who had been her third maestro, after Granados and Casals, was so great that, upon returning to Barcelona, she spent almost a year without performing. Until she celebrated her return to the Palau de la Música by premiering Toldrà's La rosa als llavis , a work that had won the Isaac Albéniz Prize just before 1936 and which Toldrà had kept in the drawer for eleven years... waiting for Conxita to return.

“Imagine a composer who waits for you for years and doesn't even know if you'll return,” notes the artist's great-granddaughter, Mireia Bonet, who is curator of the Conxita Badia Year and has designed a series of events, such as the opening roundtable at the Acadèmia Marshall last May. A journalist and specialist in event organization and communication strategies, Bonet also draws on the knowledge passed on to her by her grandmother, Mariona Agustí Badia, the eldest of the soprano's daughters, who passed away last week at the age of 100, much of which she dedicated to reminding the world of Conxita.

“Conxita has always been an omnipresent figure in the house. Grandma would talk about her, even in the smallest details. If we were eating and there was an orange for dessert, she would explain that when they arrived in Brazil, there were oranges everywhere, and that they would cut them in half and eat them like that, on the street. And then everyone at the table would eat them that way.” Badia was a very special mother. She took her girls everywhere. And if she gave a concert at the Generalitat for Francesc Macià, one would end up sitting on the president's lap.

"She wasn't a diva, she didn't dress luxuriously or live with privileges. She lived in her own musical world. She could arrive at a rehearsal having forgotten the sheet music, because she was so immersed in the song that she didn't need it," Bonet continues.

The Badia Year will yield some discoveries. Such as the confirmation that the Generalitat (Catalan government) commissioned her to perform the concerts to inaugurate the major exhibition of Catalan medieval art that traveled to Paris in 1937. Financial documentation has now been found that also demonstrates that when she left Spain, Ventura Gassol gave her a mission: to introduce Catalan music and this art form to France.

"The family understood why she didn't go directly to Brazil with her daughters, where her husband, a builder who decided to try his luck in America, was," the great-granddaughter continues. This commemorative year has boosted research; new discoveries will be made, as will be seen in the symposium organized by the UB, involving the UAB, the ESMUC (University of Buenos Aires), the Museum of Music, and the IEC (Central University of Buenos Aires), with fifteen presentations on little-known facets of Conxita's life.

Read also The world enters a garden: why books about garden spaces are booming Maricel Chavarría

“It's interesting to revisit the character beyond the great artist who 'spoke well'. She was like an actress. We've rediscovered that she participated in Rusiñol's play L'alegría que passa . And if they asked her to sing, she did, but as an extra. She had performed L'auca del senyor Esteve .”

Sheet music written by Conxita Badia has also been recovered from the Fons. “Little survived, between the war and her exile. It was known that she spent all day at the piano, improvising, and that the first song she played upon waking was T'estimo , dedicated to her husband. But writing the score was something she only did if she had to give it to someone.”

It was no coincidence that this year's opening ceremony wasn't a grand event at the Palau de la Música or the Liceu, but rather an event at the Marshall Academy, where she began studying with Granados. "We thought that represented her more. Alicia de Larrocha's daughter revealed to us that her mother, all her life until she got married, had a photo of Conxita Badia on her nightstand, the same way teenagers now have posters of their idols in their bedrooms," Bonet says. She had heard about Larrocha; she was a woman who was in exile. And when she returned, they met and became great friends. One of the last words Conxita spoke before she died was 'Alicia.'

Read also The Barcelona suburbs are filled with cultural events for the summer. Jose Polo, Paloma Arenós and Fede Cedó

“She inspired devotion. A Moroccan prince, exiled in Paris, passed through Barcelona, and at a concert she gave, he made her repeat a Granados song seven times. And on the seventh, he took out a diamond ring and gave it to her.”

It was when uncontrolled individuals killed her then-neighbor Manuel Clausells, secretary and lifeblood of the Associació Música Da Camera and concert programmer, in 1936 that Conxita decided she had to leave. She was going to be a single woman with her three daughters traveling the world. But that never stopped her; she was already supporting herself. Her destination was Brazil, but in France, she met a whole series of great orchestra conductors of the time who organized concerts for her and took her to Holland, Belgium, Switzerland... Absent-minded as she was, she once forgot her passport and ended up singing for Swiss customs officials to let her through; she had a concert to perform. The opportunity to leave for Brazil and reunite with her husband came from a Brazilian manager. And Casals also advised her to do so: there would soon be a war in Europe. From there, her move to Argentina began, because after her debut at the Teatro Colón, they wanted to take her. And she remained there for seven years.

Read also Dagoll Dagom, the end of half a century of theatre Magi Camps

As a mother, Badia was ultra-protective, the curator maintains. When her school-aged daughters couldn't travel with her, she gave up long tours like those offered to her in the United States. Even with her students, she was more than a teacher. Back in Barcelona, she welcomed students from Japan or Russia, like Yelena Obrastzova, and didn't hesitate to have them in her home. Before singing—"Little girl, have you eaten?"—she would make them an omelet because she feared they weren't well-fed.

As a woman in a man's world, she commanded respect, even in the decades before the war, such as when she invited Arnold Schoenberg to premiere his works in Barcelona. The letter signed by the great figures of Catalan culture of the time only includes one woman, Conxita.

Upon her return to Barcelona in 1946, Conxita Badia had to maintain a low profile. She began to make her way in the teaching field, but it wasn't easy to get a position as a professor at the municipal conservatory. "I suppose her visits to Pau Casals in Prada de Conflent took their toll," says Mireia Bonet. "Sometimes they asked for a day pass to see him. But it took them two years to get their first one."

A summer of events throughout Catalonia

Conxita Badia has a long festival calendar this summer, from Peralada to Sant Fruitós de Bages; from Sant Pere de Rodes to the Tortosa Proto-Fest, as well as the Viñas de Moià Festival and the (z)ona Ponts Festival. Castellterçol will host a tribute on August 1st with Arnau Tordera, Mònica Pagès, and Mireia Domènech. Favara de Matarranya will dedicate an entire day on July 19th to her role as a bridge between Catalonia and the Franja de Ponent region. Promoting the scores Badia composed and published by Ficta is a way to continue her singing mastery. She is performed in the ESMUC master's programs. And at the Peralada Festival, on the 17th, Montserrat Seró will also perform her songs, along with others by Pau Casals. In Sant Pere de Rodes, Mireia Pintó will pay tribute to her on the 26th of this month. And in Tortosa, on the 29th, there will be a talk about Badia and Felip Pedrell, who was her best man. "We want to make things that are emotionally meaningful," says curator Mireia Bonet. Finally, the Francesc Viñas festival in Moià will screen the documentary " Conxita Badia Does Not Exist" directed by Eulàlia Domènech on August 3rd.

“Conxita, I heard you've returned. When will we see each other again?” the teacher wrote to her in a letter that is still preserved.

His first visit must have been quite amusing. The housekeeper at Casals's house prevented him from seeing him at first. The maestro was resting. But the hours were numbered. So he burst into song, "El cant dels ocells," and Casals immediately appeared at the door of his room. "Conxita, Conxita...!" After more than a decade without hearing her, he instantly recognized her voice.

“Everything I've written for soprano voice, I've done with you in mind. Everything, like this, belongs to you,” the maestro and cellist, now in his eighties, wrote to her. And the music written for her, along with his own scores, will inform the tribute concerts taking place this summer at various festivals across Catalonia.