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I have read the following sentence:

El micrófono del cantante se cortó durante su interpretación del himno nacional.

https://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword=performance says that "representación" could be used instead of "interpretación". Could "presentación" be used in this context, given that it can mean "the act of presenting something" (https://dle.rae.es/presentaci%C3%B3n) ?

Alan Evangelista
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Representación would be OK if this was theater. Note that WordReference itself already marks this as a suitable context for other definitions. For musical performances, the idiomatic word is interpretar and its derivatives. In fact, a person who sings or plays an instrument professionally, or at least in a more or less structured event, is usually called intérprete. This is often done to distinguish them from the composer, the person who did the arrangements, etc.

There are instances where representación could be OK, but for a particular piece of music (such as el himno nacional) it has to be interpretación.

Presentación would work only if this was a new version of something, or a new musical album. It also works, I think, with theater and opera, but mostly it's related to the unveiling of works of art.

pablodf76
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  • Thanks for the answer! I thought that "presentación" could be used for any presentation (of a musical show, a theater play, sales results, a person, a place, etc), regardless if it is new. I thought it only mattered if it is new to the current audience. For instance, I thought "presentación" could be used for a theater play running for six months or a music which is already on the radio for 1 year (given that, for the specific audience of today, the show is new). However, it is clear from what you said that "presentación" is more specific than the English word "presentation". – Alan Evangelista Dec 31 '19 at 22:19
  • The term is flexible to some extent, but what I wrote is basically how I see it in actual usage. El cantante presentó su nuevo disco en un concierto en el que interpretó además varios de sus temas clásicos. – pablodf76 Dec 31 '19 at 22:22
  • @AlanEvangelista - Well, in English one would use "performance." "Presentation" would generally be for non-artistic things. // To help you understand why "interpretación" is a perfect fit in your sentence, consider that singers do their best to make their rendition of a standard piece of music personal and unique. In fact, no two performances of the same piece, by the same person, are perfectly identical. // I looked at your wordreference link. The "representación" entry for the singer's microphone glitch is incorrect. – aparente001 Jan 01 '20 at 17:16
  • Indeed I should have written "performance" instead of "presentation" in my last comment when talking about artistic content. Thanks for the correction, @aparente001. And thanks for highlighting the wrong translation of "performance" to "representación" in my example extracted from the WR page, I'll report it. – Alan Evangelista Jan 02 '20 at 00:14