The Liceu regains muscle and invests with aplomb in its own label: the allocation of 15 million euros of the 54.8 million budgeted for the next season is allocated to the artistic project will give rise, among other things, to ten opera productions. And only one is rented. The rest are new productions led by the theater (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Lohengrin and the newly created commission from Antoni Ros Marbà Benjamin a Portbou), new co-productions (Rusalka, La sonnambula, Giulio Cesare) or revivals of great repertoire titles that has in his Modern Bed Designs (La Traviata, La forza del destiny and Madama Butterfly).
Even in its brief dance section, the Liceu has wanted to co-produce a title… it is Don Juan and Semiramis by Gluck, the father of modern opera to whom Jordi Savall pays tribute together with the Le Concert des Nations Orchestra and the artists of the Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse.
The 2024-2025 academic year of the Liceu de les Arts will also be marked by three interesting collaborations with visual artists: Sebastiao Salgado, with 200 of his legendary photos of the Amazon fused with the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Philip Glass; William Kentridge’s animated film proposal that spans from the Russian Revolution to the death of Stalin while Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony plays, and the dialogue between Schumann’s Poet’s Love performed by baritone Gerald Finley and Gerhard’s work Richter (artist who runs through the season script).
Chasing a dream is the concept under which Víctor García de Gomar, artistic director of the institution, wants to structure this programming. “A dream based on knowledge, art and opera, a pursuit that gives meaning to our lives,” he warns. And he gives as examples the aspirations of the characters: Katarina and Serguei (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk), Violetta and Alfredo (La Traviata), Cio-Cio-San; Walter Benjamin fleeing Nazism…
The season will open on September 25 with the promised Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Shostakovich’s opera that Stalin ended up censoring and that Àlex Ollé, resident artist at the Liceu for two more years, longed to bring to the stage. With his set designer, Alfons Flores, they have designed a pool that occupies the entire stage and whose waters swallow the light, engulfing the scene in the blackness in which the protagonist lives buried. For the Russian composer it was going to be the first of a trilogy dedicated to strong women with a tragic ending, but the project ended here, with that lady suffocated by a sexist environment and annihilated by her husband. Josep Pons will assume the musical direction, with the voices of Sara Jakubiak (Ángeles Blancas in the three performances of the alternative cast) and Pavel Cernoch.
The confinement of 2020 put an end to the then imminent premiere of Lohengrin signed by Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter herself, Katharina Wagner, artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival. The next season will thus be considered overcome by the vicissitudes that the artistic team experienced at that time in the Barcelona lyrical coliseum and the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt will give life, as planned, to the mysterious knight of the swan. Although it will finally be Elisabeth Teige, a goddess from Bayreuth who had not yet performed at the Liceu, who will take on the role of Duchess Elsa, while the cunning Ortrud will be played by the acclaimed Iréne Theorin.
Apart from that Wagner and the initial Shostakovich, Josep Pons will conduct Rusalka, by Antonin Dvorák, from the pit. This is Christof Loy’s production (the one with the protagonist on crutches) that premiered last year at the Teatro Real, although in Barcelona it will be the tenor Piotr Beczala – his return in Barcelona in a staged opera is expected – who will sing it alongside the award-winning soprano Asmik Grigorian. It should be noted that, in their partnership as co-producers, the Real and the Liceu took turns presenting in Spain this Loy and the Onegin with which the German stage director inaugurated the current season of the Rambla theater and which was You will see now in Madrid.
It will also have already been seen in the Real La Sonnambula by Bellini, which bears the seal of Bárbara Lluch and shines in the voices of Nadine Sierra and Xabier Anduaga, although in Barcelona Lorenzo Paserini, a specialist in bel canto and the Verdi of youth, a young Lombard conductor who is establishing himself in the orbit of La Scala in Milan or the Met in New York.
Neither Rusalka nor La Sonnambula will have an alternative cast beyond a couple of performances, since both leading couples are the ones the public wants to see, says De Gomar, who has designed a season of great voices, “as befits the tradition of this theatre”: Maria Agresta and Saioa Hernández will defend the role of Leonora in Verdi’s La forza del destiny, a co-production with the Paris Opera by Jean-Claude Avray and which will mark the debut of maestro Nicola Luisotti at the Liceu.
Saioa Hernández will also be Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, a role she shares with Sony Yoncheva and Ailyn Pérez. And as for La Traviata that will be seen in January 2025 – the one from David McVicar’s production that the pandemic allowed to be shown to very few audiences -, it will have a luxury cast: Nadine Sierra and Ruth Iniesta as Violetta and Javier Camarena and ( again) Xabier Anduaga as Alfredo. In fact, the Liceu has put the spotlight on Nadine Sierra this season: the American soprano will also star in the already announced concert version of West Side Story directed by Gustavo Dudamel, in addition to a recital with Pretty Yende.
Returning to the premieres, the love story between Caesar and Cleopatra returns to the Gran Teatre, this time with Händel’s title, Giulio Cesare, directed by a true William Christie. The opera stars Xavier Sabata – finally a Händel comme il faut for the Catalan countertenor at the Liceu – and soprano Julie Fuchs, the same one he recently did with Poppea. In fact, both singers will meet again with Calixto Bieito, who signs the transformation of that parable of baroque opera into a universalist and modern one.
Regarding that only stage rental that the season contains, it is none other than the celebrated stage occupation of Mozart’s Requiem signed by Romeo Castellucci for the 2019 Aix-en-provence Festival and which marks the high school debut of the Italian theater director with a special philosophical outlook, an appetizer prior to his landing with the Wagnerian Tetralogy. Giovanni Antonini conducts the Liceu Orchestra in that bold and disturbing theatrical version of the score that, to the envy of the boomers, will have a concert version only for the Under35 community of the Liceu (which already numbers 25,000 young people) at the Sagrada Família.
Regarding the world premiere of Ros-Marbà, the Catalan maestro (the only one who has led the Berlin Philharmonic) will conduct his own score in July 2025 about the last chapter of the life of the philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin . An opera in two acts based on the libretto by Anthony Carrol Madigan whose semi-staged proposal is signed by Anna Ponces, with scenery by the Girona-based audiovisual research studio Playmodes.
The rest of the new operatic creation will have to be found in the Oh!pera micro-opera project, which has Àlex Ollé as its mentor. And in that new initiative promoted by the CCCB, the Macba and the Liceu: Today’s Microoperas (art, music and thought), a project that proposes a musical itinerary through the Raval and which represents a first great opportunity at the Liceu for creators of the future
The dance will also feature the Barcelona premiere in October of Afanador, that adventure by Marcos Morau with the National Ballet of Spain in which the director of La Veronal explores the nature of flamenco, inspired by the work of photographer Ruvén Afanador. Hammer, by Alexander Ekman, will also be seen by the Göteborg Ballet. A dynamic and introspective show that captures the passage from the generosity of the hippie community to modern individuality.
In the concert version, up to three operas will be seen, in addition to the aforementioned West Side Story by Bernstein. René Jacobs continues to complete his immersion in Mozart titles and will offer Idomeneo with the Freiburg Barockorchester and Emiliano González Toro as the protagonist. Marc Minkowski and his Musiciens du Louvre will offer the Viennese operetta The Bat, by Johann Strauss, before Christmas (on the 150th anniversary of his death), and Francesco Corti will conduct the high school premiere of La Merope, by Terradellas, the Catalan Händel.
Among the recitals, it is worth mentioning the presence of Lise Davidsen together with Matthias Goerne. The Wagnerian soprano will give her first Liebestod to the high school public. The couple Sondra Radvanovsky-Piotr Beczala will return to close the Puccini year, while Ermonela Yaho will make her solo debut at the Rambla theater and Elina Garanca will also be heard in an intimate recital. The theater incorporates a lyrical gala that will bring together Marina Rebeka, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Martin Muehle and Ludovic Tézier, a quartet of stars to review the verdian and verista catalogue.