Six new own opera productions and one dance; montages with personality, specialized batons and voices of high school queens; renowned visual artists who pour their works in concert, collaboration with the CCCB and Macba to explore the limits of what is considered an opera, choice of librettists and contemporary themes for the Oh!pera project… The next season is when the transversal vision of the Liceu de les Arts held by the current artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar, finally emerged.
Àlex Ollé and Josep Pons – resident artist and musical director of the theater respectively – come together to open fire on September 25 with a long cherished project: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich’s critique of Soviet masculinity and oppression that was composer the definitive animus of Stalin. The singers will pass through monumental rooms with a flooded floor (of phreatic water hidden under the Liceu) without being aware that they are in a dark lake, a metaphor for the drowsy universe they inhabit, explains Ollé.
To this project that was born without a co-producer is added the premiere – now yes – of Lohengrin that Katharina Wagner, great-granddaughter of the composer, was about to stage at the Gran Teatre when the lockdown was declared in March 2020. In Germany, this new approach in which the good make bad and the bad make good (and the white swan is black) also had to be cancelled, so the Barcelona one remains, five years later, in March of 2025, world premiere.
In addition to these two titles, Pons will direct the summit of bohemian romanticism that is Dvorák’s Rusalka, with Christof Loy’s staging that the Liceu co-produces with Oslo and Real, although in Barcelona it will be Piotr Beczala, a specialist in this role of prince, the one who will sing it with Asmik Grigorian. The belcantist Sonnambula in which Bellini proposes for the first time a story of female infidelity is another co-production with Madrid that will be defended by Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga. The soprano from the United States is destined to be the generational relief of the divas who reign at the Liceu, as she will have four appearances with it: with Javier Camarena she will be Violetta in David McVicar’s La Traviata that the Liceu recovers, since during the pandemic the he could see very few people; will play Maria in the already announced West Side Story, with Gustavo Dudamel on the baton and Juan Diego Flórez as partner, and will form an explosive duo in recital with Pretty Yende. Another unmissable recital will be that of Lise Davidsen debuting Isolde with Liebestod, a gift she is giving to the Liceu.
Saioa Hernández will also star in the other two revivals: Verdi’s La forza del destino and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a role she will share with Sonia Yontxeva. And if we are talking about country singers, the must is to reunite the countertenor Xavier Sabata with the great Calixto Bieito in a brilliant Handel like Giulio Cesare. And with William Christie at the podium.
Finally, in the co-productions chapter, you will see two Gluck ballets, Sémiramis and Don Juan, by the Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse and with Jordi Savall at the helm. The classical dance will have to wait, but you will see the shocking Afanador, the story of the photographer seen by Marcos Morau and the National Ballet of Spain. And Alexander Ekman repeats, this time with Hammer, the show that has become the most watched of the Gothenburg Ballet.
Alert, above all, to the lyceum debut of the magical stage director Romeo Castellucci, with the only production that is for rent this season with a budget of 54.8 million euros. It is his staging of Mozart’s Requiem premiered in Ais de Provence in 2019 and which he does not dress as death, but as the rebirth of nature. Directed by Giovanni Antonini with Anna Prohaska or Maria Viotti in the cast.
There will be other titles in concert (Idomeneo, La Merope de Terradellas, El Ratpenat…) and the commission that Antoni Ros-Marbà received, Benjamin a Portbou, about the last days of the philosopher and writer fleeing Nazism. A newly created opera that will be seen semi-staged. In addition, the Liceu is supported by great visual artists: Sebastião Salgado’s famous Amazon photos are projected while the Liceu Orchestra plays the music of Villa-Lobos and Glass. William Kentridge returns to construct the Soviet vicissitudes of Shostakovich’s time as Pons conducts the 10th Symphony, and the artist Gerhard Richter, who collaborated on the season book, dialogues with Schumann and Schubert.
“The artistic director gets a lot of juice out of the 15 million euros earmarked for artistic activity. It is through personal relationships that we manage to make the Liceu de les Arts shine because with a checkbook it would have been impossible for Richter to fill the season book”, said Valentí Oviedo, general director of the theatre, yesterday. The 2024-2025 season will start debt-free. In August, the historical credit and the one contracted due to the pandemic are settled.
“This margin of 1.6 or 1.7 million that we have become accustomed to creating will allow repairs and maintenance of a building that was rebuilt 25 years ago,” said the president of the entity, Salvador Alemany. And it is with a theater in full stability that the competition to build the Liceu Mar will open in the autumn.
