Sleep No More , the stormy sentence with which Macbeth shows his conviction in Shakespeare's work that his guilt for having killed the king will never let him sleep again, serves as the title of the documentary that Fundació 'la Caixa' has Made to show the creative process carried out this season at the Liceu by the sculptor Jaume Plensa when he tackled, in his debut as a stage director, the opera that Verdi dedicated to that classic.
CaixaForum premieres today this audiovisual content that shows the scenes of the preparation and rehearsals for Macbeth, which allows you to delve into the day-to-day life of Plensa and the creative and technical team over the course of nine months. This is the type of exclusive given by the collaboration agreement between the Liceu and the 'la Caixa' Foundation within the framework of the CaixaForum online platform.
If Verdi used this title to mature his combination of classical bel canto with a more dramatic one, Plensa, who had previously participated as a set designer in operatic productions of La Fura dels Baus, devoted himself to this story fusing sculpture and opera, transferring his dreams of a plastic artist to the compositional and theatrical language, and putting his imagination at the service of a stage design and costumes.
"This documentary allows us to discover how Plensa Macbeth imagines, a work that he himself has described as the cornerstone of his artistic imagination, how he gets excited, how he works and how he lives this entire creative process throughout nine months", indicates the Foundation itself. .
Produced by BAS (Broadcaster Audiovisual Services), the 67-minute feature film is directed by Pedro Ballesteros, who had already done with the Barcelona artist Can you hear me? (2020), DocsBarcelona audience award and best film at the Arte Non Stop Film in Buenos Aires.
Of an “observational” nature, the documentary assumes the structure of Verdi's opera in four acts: the preparations and first meetings between Plensa and the collaborators; the first rehearsals with the musicians, singers and dancers; the design and construction of the scenery and its integration into the Liceu stage; and the countdown, the last rehearsals and the nerves of the premiere.
Images of the opera premiere are interspersed with all these other scenes in which musicians, singers -Luca Salsi and Sondra Radvanovsky-, the choreographer Antonio Ruz, the costume designer Nadia Balada, dressmakers, dancers, lighting designers, councilors... appear. the artists from the Plensa workshops in Sant Feliu de Llobregat and Huesca. In addition, the complicity between Plensa and Josep Pons, the musical director, with whom he made Atlántida de Falla decades ago, together with La Fura, is evident.
The Liceu platform will also offer the documentary temporarily in the future.
