“The theater is an ephemeral art, but in this exhibition we have been able to recover or recreate some of the emblematic sets of Alfons Flores”, explains Joan Maria Minguet, who has curated L’escenario prodigios.
For the occasion, one of the rooms at the Centro Tecla Sala de l’Hospitalet de Llobregat has been renovated to house four large sets by Flores, born in this city in 1957 and who has worked for many theater and opera directors, including two due to the volume of work: Àlex Ollé and Calixto Bieito.
“They have allowed us to remove all the partitions,” says the set designer, who has contributed many pieces from his collection, such as posters, drawings, models… “Here the public will enter inside the sets, so that they will stop being spectators and become become actors. “My fantasy is for people to come in and see what happens.”
The director of the Tecla Sala, Antoni Perna, had been pursuing Flores for an exhibition for some time and, finally, he achieved it: “I wanted to recognize the fifty of his work. Scenography is a rare discipline in an art center and, however, we hope that some of the pieces will become part of the art collection.”
“Mar Flores had the idea of ??turning the room into a stage with the stage, the looms and the comb,” says Minguet, who emphasizes that the exhibition begins with material from the GAT (Grup d’Acció Teatral), “a tribute to theater.” independent of the seventies.
Among the four large sets on display, there are three of operas: a small-scale recreation of the crown of thorns braided with crucifixes that he made for Bellini’s Norma, at the Royal Opera House in London in 2016, which was seen later at the Liceu; the inflatable Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, for the Teatro Real in Madrid, in 2010; and the forest of canopies, among which the visitor can walk, from L’elisir d’amore, by Donizetti, for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf, 2015.
The fourth is a forest of televisions inspired by the scenery of Bodas de sangre, by Lorca, which he made for the Grec in 2001. Also notable is the model of Le Grand Macabre, by Ligeti, which in 2011 caused a great sensation at the Liceu. “The sets are ephemeral, they are saved whenever there is a plan to do the work again, but finally they are destroyed and recycled: storage has a cost,” Flores declares.
“The directors have always given me the freedom to create the scenery that I have considered, and then we have agreed on it,” Flores recalls. Among the objects on display, there are pieces of paper tablecloths from El Rincón de Aragón: “We had dinner there with Bieito when he was director of Romea and I drew ideas. I need to draw what I think to visualize it,” he concludes.
