The Consell d’Eivissa has awarded the Medal of Citizen Merit to this German woman who brought some of the world’s finest musicians to the island between 1988 and 2018.
One cannot talk about classical music in Ibiza without mentioning the name of Margarita Kinsberger. This German woman, who has lived in Santa Eulària since 1988, has spent more than 30 years organising and promoting classical music concerts, giving the island a place in the cultural agenda of Europe. In an interview with Diario de Ibiza, in 2018 – announcing her retirement from the world of music – Kinsberger acknowledged that she had had to pay for many things out of her own pocket, although she said she did not regret it, “I have obtained a lot of happiness, especially seeing the way in which many people have learned to understand and love classical music”. She made these statements on 5 October, one day before celebrating what was to be the last of the concerts that this veteran promoter would organise in Puig de Missa, precisely the place where she had organised the first one 30 years earlier, with a recital by the clarinetist David Wolf and the organist Fritz Walther, who performed pieces by Bach, Messiaen, Mozart and Stravinsky.
On her arrival in Ibiza in 1974 Margarita Kinsberger fell in love with the island, bought an apartment in Siesta and settled here with her family. On the island she realised that there was just one detail required to make Ibiza a perfect place: a programme of classical music concerts and operas. After speaking with the then mayor of Santa Eulària, Vicent Guasch, and with the local parish priest, she organised the first music event in Puig de Missa.
She soon organised a busy schedule of concerts, which included at least one event a month and, in the summer season, up to two or three monthly recitals. Thus, and in collaboration with well-known names on the island, such as Kónya, the businessman José Colomar, and authorities such as the Consell d’Eivissa y Formentera and the Santa Eulària des Riu Town Council, Ibiza became the setting for concerts by singers and musicians from the St. Petersburg Opera and the Scala of Milan, among others.
For all these reasons, on 12 April the Consell d’Eivissa awarded Margarita Kinsberger the Citizen’s Merit Award at a gala in which the painter Rafel Tur Costa and the professor Rosa Vallès won the Gold Medal, while the businessman and radio pioneer Joan Tur Riera was posthumously named Honorary Citizen of the island. A perfect finishing touch that culminated, inevitably, with a concert in which the arias and opera closed an event full of emotion and gratitude.