30 June 2026 – I started this blog because there are things that don’t fit into an Instagram post and that you aren’t asked about in interviews. They lie somewhere in between, in that space that belongs to the writer and the reader, without any intermediaries.
The Colón. Or: what happens when you step onto the podium and owe nothing to anyone. Buenos Aires, at night, smells of barbecued meat and jacaranda. Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily both at the same time.
The Teatro Colón stands right in the middle, between the Palace of Congress and the Casa Rosada, as if the city’s history had decided to place music right at the very centre of it all. It was inaugurated in 1908. Since then, it has hosted Toscanini, Callas, Bernstein and Karajan. The stage has a long memory, and if you stand there quietly long enough before the rehearsal begins, you can almost hear it.
The first time I stepped onto that podium, I thought: nobody brought me here. I’m not saying this to boast. I’m saying it because it’s a strange and distinct sensation, almost physical. When you step onto a podium knowing you’ve given it your all — years of concerts in small theatres, of tackling orchestras one by one, of studying scores until sleep got the better of you — that feeling is unlike anything else. It isn’t pride. It’s something quieter.
Acoustics and the deception of numbers
The Colón has seven tiers of boxes, a capacity of around three thousand people, and a horseshoe-shaped auditorium – the traditional layout of “Italian-style” theatres – which experts consistently rank amongst the top three in the world. These are the figures. But figures, in themselves, tell us nothing.
What the rehearsals reveal, however — that moment when you’re there alone with the orchestra, before the audience arrives — is that the sound in that hall is never lost. It spreads out. It expands into every corner as if it knew where to go. I’ve conducted all over Europe, in Asia, in beautiful concert halls and in ones that were anything but. The Colón has a quality I can’t quite put my finger on: it feels as though the architecture is listening to you.
A conductor is always working against something — against reverberation, against muffled acoustics, against the unsuitable shape of a theatre. At the Colón, you don’t work against anything. You work with it. And it’s as if this resonates in the people who inhabit that space.
People – which is, after all, what it’s all about
The Orquesta Estable, the Coro Estable, the resident conductors, and all the staff at the Teatro Colón do not need to be told what dedication is. They already know. It is one of the most incredible musical environments I have ever encountered — and I have encountered orchestras all over the world, with different histories, different customs, and different ways of welcoming you or putting you to the test. What I found in Buenos Aires is a collective that lives and breathes music, rather than merely being accustomed to it; a world of difference, believe me.
The pupils at ISATC
And then there is the Teatro Colón Higher Institute of Art, which trains young Argentine musicians. Over the years, I have held a number of concerts and masterclasses with them. And working with them reaffirms to me every time that classical music has no problem securing its future. The problem, if anything, lies with us — the adults who talk about it as though it were already dead. Or as though it were a museum piece, to be kept under a glass case. But music is a living being, which breathes with us, just as we do.
Those young musicians play with a focus and intensity that many seasoned professionals no longer possess. Not because they are necessarily the best, but because they have not yet become jaded. They have not yet grown accustomed to the beauty that surrounds them and that they themselves create; they retain the fire of curiosity and wonder.
What does it mean to build an international career? When there are no shortcuts, you really do learn everything. You learn to read an orchestra, to tell when a musician is tired or unhappy, and to find the right way to say something difficult without losing the trust of the people in front of you. You learn to stand on the podium not because you have to, but because you have something to say.
I don’t come from a family of musicians. I didn’t have any mentors. I had music, stubbornness, and the good fortune to meet people who believed in what I was doing even before I fully believed in it myself.
The Teatro Colón gave me the opportunity to say what I had to say in front of an audience that listens with extraordinary attentiveness. In my experience, the Buenos Aires classical music audience is unrivalled anywhere in the world. They are not simply a musically educated audience — they are an audience in love with music! And it is impossible not to feel this extraordinary energy whilst conducting.
Why am I writing this?
I started this blog because there are things that don’t fit into an Instagram post and that you aren’t asked about in interviews. They lie somewhere in between, in that space that belongs to the writer and the reader, without any intermediaries.
I’ll start with the Colón because it’s the place where, over the past few years, I’ve felt that I was exactly where I was meant to be. I don’t know how often in life you get to feel something like that. Quite rarely, I think. And that’s worth writing about.
Beatrice Venezi