It has a production rate of at least five new opera productions per season, many of which are world premieres. The number skyrockets with the reruns that his team puts up in theaters around the world. The mere presence of Calixto Bieito in Barcelona already creates expectation. Even more so when his vision of L’incoronazione di Poppea, the Monteverdi that opens the Liceu on Monday (subscribers have a 15% discount on the purchase of tickets here), makes the maestro Jordi Savall somewhat uncomfortable. Due to the violence and bloody scenes that will take place around it, since the orchestra pit is embedded in the stage in this case.
But isn’t Poppea a carnival of thirst for power and sex? Didn’t the Empress die from a kick in the stomach that Nero gave her when she was pregnant, totally drunk?
The desired theater director from Burgos, who spent more than two decades living in Barcelona and has spent another two in Basel, drags the label of provocateur at the age of 59. But in the opera houses he is considered a priest of sensibility, one of the most stimulating creators of our time, with a good range of registers. He was one of the first to break the rules of opera. Sex, blood, violence… But there is no single Bieito formula in his review of the classics. He is not looking for provocation per se.
How does the creative spark arise in your case?
I do what I feel, I share with the musical director, with the singers, with the text and, basically, with the music. We have a very strong complicity with the singers, we create a space of freedom in which everything is possible. I’m not afraid of making a fool of myself, nothing happens.
The ridicule before the artists? Because it won’t be before the public…
It’s just that I can’t think about the public. I work in fifty different theaters and I have never thought about each of the audiences. That is speculation, and I do not speculate.
Not even when 30 years ago he directed at the Lliure or the Romea?
No, I didn’t think “this is intended for the public of the Lliure”. What is the public? I do not know. They told me that the TNC was very different from the Lliure. Well… People talk about culture and art… but they are different things. They are related, but art comes from dreams and fantasies, from visions and from what you feel. When a society makes it its own, it becomes culture, but I don’t do culture. I’m not a salesman, I make art.
What does Savall’s argument that the musical beauty of the Baroque collides with the staged violence of his Poppea suggest to you?
It is that baroque music is not always beautiful. There is a very staccato one, which shows bestial violence. Poppea has a lot. They are works like Giulio Cesare, of intrigue, crimes, sex…, all combined. What happens is that the music gives it a more abstract and magical dimension, but it’s great musical theater. It is how people expressed themselves at the time: the great carnival. The producers wanted bigger sets, bigger magic effects: there were circus-like shows. The big difference, now, is the work that the singers do, which is deep, really authentic. I give very few classes, it commands respect, but from time to time I give them in Basel, in Berlin…, and I try to convey that: that they are artists and you have to be free. Different composers have put their hands on Poppea, I’m not inventing anything.
What is your secret to deeply connecting with artists?
Don’t know. Great directors come to see my rehearsals, I’m flattered, but they see it and they don’t quite understand it. They say I work in a very different way. But you need authenticity to be able to sing with your whole being, metaphorically… I think it’s based on mutual trust. And most singers know that I don’t speculate, and if something doesn’t go well I’ll change it, but I’ll say the same.
Bring the Roman empire to the present using a sea of ??selfies. Low-key vanity?
It is that today people explain their private life and intimacies. I am a friend of Karl Ove Knausgård, with whom I did a production about an Ibsen. He made it fashionable again to show his life. I told him that his was a total act of catharsis or monumental selfishness. Many writers explain the smallest details of his life, and this is also a selfie. I am a very discreet person, I do not have Instagram or Facebook.
With Hèctor Parra he has just premiered Orgia in Bilbao. He has been saying for years that you illuminated for him the most human side of music, the most carnal, made of blood, skin and muscle…
That says yes. In Orgia I have seen a much more lyrical Parra and at the same time he can be more staccato. The music is beautiful, it has a wonderful sarabande and uses parlato very well. The opera we did on Jonathan Littell’s Las benevolosas was too long, but in Orgia I wrote the libretto and it lasts 85 minutes. At the age of 16, I had already seen all of Pasolini’s films. Saló made me put on a layer of protection, but I periodically watch The Matthew Passion. And it was really hard for me to get back into Pasolini. Why? Hèctor told me: if you are very close to his self-destructive world. Orgia is not just a diversity statement, I don’t need to make a pamphlet. The work is talking about death and someone who has a conflict of diversity and sadomasochism, and that has to do with Pasolini.
