One more year, here is the Antique Music Festival, which started last Sunday night with a successful concert at the Magdalena church. Tickets had been sold out for some days and a huge queue around the temple waiting for the event, the very start of the Festival’s 27th edition.

The programme for the premiere was entirely devoted to a work that celebrates its four-hundredth anniversary this year: the Vespro della beata vergine (Vespers for the blessed virgin), written by Claudio Monteverdi in Rome in 1610. The performance was a result of the collaboration of our local Coro Barroco de Andalucía and the ensemble Les Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse, directed by Lluís Vilamajó.

Using an iPhone as our means to bring you some passages of the show, here’s how it sounded like:

This suite comprises, following the scheme of a mass, several pieces: a response, various psalms and motets, hymns and a final magnificat. Imagine listening to all this music in a unique scenario: the Magdalena church, one of Seville’s baroque jewels, perfectly lighted and working as the perfect sounding board for a chamber concert.

The audience, enthusiastic like no other, enjoyed the concert and the possibility of feeling back, for two hours, to the beginning of the 17th century. In fact, the thirteen pieces of the Vespers that were performed were not enough and had to be topped with an encore that you can hear here:

The festival is on until March 21 in different venues around the city. You can visit its website www.femas.es to know more. And if you want to enjoy even more, you can listen to this performance of the Vespers we have found in the Spotify catalogue. If you feel that it’s not so good as enjoying it live… you still have ten days to make it real.

Everything’s almost set for the grand opening of The young Murillo exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla next Saturday. Fourty of the earliest works of one of the best Sevillans artists will be displayed at the Museum, allowing us to travel back to the times when Seville was the centre of the Spanish Imperium. His well-known representations of virgin Mary and Jesus, the Sevillan saints Isidore and Leander or scenes of the 17th century daily life are based on the basis that these 40 pictures once set.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo is just one of the universal painting masters born in Seville, along with Velázquez, Herrera the Elder or Valdés Leal. A great collection of their complete works are permanently displayed at the Museum, especially in its fifth room, once built to be the chapel of the Merced Descalza monastery and now one of the most charming spots of Sevillan art. It’s always great to visit the Museum. If you just needed an excuse, El joven Murillo is the perfect one.

Tickets are free for all EU visitors and just €1.50 for the rest. Free audioguide service is also available. More info at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla website.

As we are completely immerse in the Christmas season, it is quite much a good time for setting a Christmas tree at your home. Notice that I use the word ‘your’ and not ‘our’… since we Sevillans are not much into trees but into belenes instead. The love for miniature nativity scenes (’belenes’) is one of the season traditions that we share with Italians (where, according to historians and the Wikipedia, the first nativity scene was created in 1223).

Although in the decades of 1980 and 1990 the Christmas trees and Santa Claus were adopted by many in Spain, in the last years strong support for the traditional Spanish celebrations has returned. While we (again) prefer receiving our gifts from the Three Wise Men rather than from Father Christmas, the setting up a nativity scene in the favourite corner of our living room is, for many Spaniards and Sevillans, the moment where the Christmas season starts.

The only common element to every nativity scene is the ‘misterio’, the representation of Mary, Joseph and new born child Jesus. The rest of the set is commonly collected over the years by those who enjoy this hobby. There is a whole range of new elements that you can add to your nativity scene, most of them representing traditional workers such as carpenters, fishers, farmers and, of course, shepherds.

As Spanish society has become multicultural in the last decade, the fact of representing the holy family as originals from Africa or South America has also arrived as a new trend to this centuries-old tradition.

If you want to learn more about the art of building belenes, you can visit our album at flickr by clicking here. If you want to start your own nativity scene, the Seville’s Feria del Belén market is worth a visit. You’ll find it in the Avenida de la Constitución, close to the cathedral and the Indias Archive.

Situated in the island that gets its name from this monastery, La Cartuja (you can see its main façade in the picture by González-Alba above) is a special place for those seeking for transcendental experiences. It was so when this abbey was founded in the 15th century, and also when Christopher Columbus stayed here during the preparation of his second journey to the New World.

Many years later, in 1830, the Marquis of Pickman decided to establish a china factory, providing the characteristic group of kilns that were used to manufacture the world famous Cartuja porcelain.

La Cartuja, by Antonio Rull / Obtura

Remodelled again for the 1992 World Exhibition -during which it was used as the Royal Pavilion- it is nowadays the home for the Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art and for the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.

Some concerts are also regularly held there, like these days’ Territorios programme. Emir Kusturica, Wilco and the rest of the Territorios Sevilla participating artists will fill this space, and their magnificent patios, with their music. With no doubt, and once again, La Cartuja will provide us with transcendental experiences.