CASAGEMAS, Lluisa

Catalan composer, violinist and singer, born in Barcelona. She studied harmony and composition with Francesc de Paula Sánchez i Gavagnach, singing with Giovannina Bardelli and violin with Agustí Torelló. While still in her teens, she composed the three-act opera Schiava e regina, which received a medal and diploma at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Its planned premiere at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu during the 1893–1894 season was cancelled after an anarchist bombing closed the theatre. The manuscript, long believed lost, was rediscovered in 2017. Casagemas composed more than one hundred works, primarily songs and short pieces for piano, as well as the operas I Briganti and Montserrat and the symphonic work Crepuscle. The world premiere of Schiava e regina is scheduled at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2027.