• Castings Operación Triunfo 2023: dates, cities and how to participate in OT Cover to avoid queues

Operación Triunfo returns, and it does it in style. Prime Video has presented on Tuesday the new edition of the historic musical talent that was born 22 years ago and will become the first live program broadcast on a streaming platform in Spain. As a metaphor for closing the circle, vital and television, Chenoa has re-sheathed the bell jeans she wore in that 2001 test in Valencia with an interpretation of Donna Summer's Last Dance that took her directly to stardom. Yes, they fit him like a glove: "I'm going with everything," he warns, "and without elastane."

The singer broke the television "barrier" six years ago as a jury of Your face sounds to me and recognizes that it has not been easy: "They pigeonhole you in music and it seems that you can not do anything else," she says, "I gave birth to OT and in these 20 years I have tried to learn and unlearn everything I took from there " . Her return to the program in which it all began is like "coming home", from the big headlines to the small details: many of the cameramen who followed her in her contest will now focus on her as a host. She faces the challenge with emotion, and warns: "I have no filter, for better and for worse, and I have been sitting at the table where the contestants will be, it is impossible not to empathize a lot. That is not forgotten, it is engraved on fire."

I have no filter, for better and for worse, and it's impossible not to empathize with the contestants. That is not forgotten, it is engraved on fire

Chenoa, presenter of OT 2023

As advice for the new generations, he collects the one that Lolita gave her when she left her audition, that of the bell cowboys, livid of pure impression: "What is there to do here?" asked the young aspirant in her twenties. "To be you," Lola Flores' daughter replied, laconic. "That's the most difficult thing," adds the Argentine, who applies two maxims that she learned, effectively, in the academy: "First, always pay attention to those who rule; Second, not losing my naturalness, it's what connects with people." And it gets graphic: "The eyebrow rises to Cuenca when something does not cool me and I say many tacos, I grew up without social networks and I guess I will have to get used to the criticism, I am already quite seasoned".

Chenoa will thus become the visible face of an experiment that will see the light at the end of the year but whose castings will start on July 3 in Barcelona and will take place until September 19 in Madrid by nine Spanish cities "with a break during the month of August to vote and make vacations", says Noemí Galera, who repeats as director of the academy and the selection tests. The mythical director of the pasta glasses that does not leave a puppet with a head – "total meme meat", she admits herself – is not the only classic that returns to OT 2023.

"The fans are very Taliban and they don't want us to modify the format too much," confesses Tinet Rubira, director of Gestmusic Endemol, the production company that created the program. So the cloister will be full of familiar faces: Manu Guix will be the musical director of the OT academy; Mamen Márquez, the vocal tuning coach; and Vicky Gómez will devise the choreographies. "The hard core of teachers connects with tradition," confirms Rubira, who advances, without going into details: "Almost everything else will be new faces. Some of them we have already contacted; Others are waiting for our call."

The academy will be much larger, with natural light and a lot of green, and the studio will be inside again as in the first edition

Tinet Rubira, director of Gestmusic Endemol

The environment will also live a return to its origins, with the studio in the same facilities in which contestants and teachers will live, although the academy, on the outskirts of Barcelona, will be "much larger, with more natural light and a lot of green, as eco-sustainable as possible," says the producer. The new times of hyperconnection will make it more necessary than ever to isolate the participants, a basic of the format that prevents even the team from talking to them during rehearsals to minimize interference in the purely musical.

Operación Triunfo revolutionized television in the early 2000s. Not surprisingly, the final that Rosa de España won is still, to this day, the most watched in the history of Spanish television. Once again, the quintessential musical contest is the spearhead of a cathodic experiment. For about three and a half months, Prime Video will broadcast a weekly 90-minute live gala, in which the performances, the deliberations of the jury and the saves will be seen, following the scheme of the last two decades.

After this appointment will come a special in which the protagonists, expelled and winners, will open in channel in extensive interviews, and a daily magazine will keep fans updated on everything that happens in the academy. Outside the platform, each contestant will have their own profiles on Instagram and TikTok, and both the castings and the 24 hours of the academy can be followed on YouTube. The most classic format will become an innovative experiment. A new door to entertainment or not, only time will tell.

  • Operation Triumph
  • Chenoa
  • Amazon Prime Video

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