Helena Cánovas’ Don Juan no existe, live from Festival Perelada

Festival: Festival Perelada
Title:Don Juan no existe
Composer: Helena Cánovas
Librettist: Alberto Iglesias
Director: Bárbara Lluch
Conductor: Jhoanna Sierralta
Cast: Natalia Labourdette (Carmen Díaz de Mendoza / Helena), David Oller (Augustin / Don Juan), Pablo García-López (Miguel), Helena Otero (saxophone), Miquel Vich (percussion), Cosmos Quartet (string quartet)
Recorded on: 8 August 2024
Streaming date: 8 November 2025
Available until: 8 May 2026
Language: Spanish (subtitles in English and Spanish)
Production: Festival Perelada, in co-production with Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatro Real
Streaming: Free on OperaVision YouTube Channel

What if Don Juan had been written by a woman? This question lies at the heart of Don Juan no existe, a new opera by Helena Cánovas that reclaims a forgotten female voice from early 20th-century Spain. The work revisits the life of Countess Carmen Díaz de Mendoza Aguado, a writer and playwright who once dared to challenge the myth of the eternal seducer — and was met with silence and failure.

A century later, Cánovas imagines a dialogue between the Countess and a contemporary composer who tries to reconstruct her lost work, exploring themes of memory, erasure, and creative resilience. With a libretto by Alberto Iglesias and direction by Bárbara Lluch, the opera blends voices, string quartet, saxophone, percussion, and electronics into a sound world that connects the past and present.

Premiered at the Festival Perelada, Don Juan no existe questions centuries of male-dominated storytelling and gives space to the women who were written out of cultural history. A co-production with the Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatro Real, it is now freely available to stream on OperaVision.