It is the first community opera staged by the Gran Teatre del Liceu. And if the objective was to open up to the Raval and its people so that the 40 nationalities represented in the neighborhood could take the stage and claim their rights through an a priori bourgeois and exclusive genre, the formula could not have worked better. In fact, even before its premiere, the next 5th and 7th of this month, La gata perduda has changed things.
This is stated by Cristina Colomer, the director of the amateur choirs that participate in the opera and that after the four years that the creation process has lasted due to the pandemic, they have become the Cor del Raval. A formation of 350 voices that, according to the plot of Victoria Spunzberg's libretto, does not resign itself to being manipulated and responds to the powerful tycoon who seeks to subjugate the neighborhood. From his hands it will be necessary to recover Botero's cat that he has stolen...
The Catalan playwright proposes a contemporary text that does not run away from reality, on the contrary, draws a neighborhood in all its diversity, but that is due in part to the fantasy sought by Arnau Tordera, the composer. Her score is designed for professionals and non-professionals who at a given moment have been challenged to know the music by heart and move around the scene.
“It was also necessary to integrate different sound traditions and disciplines that would make us all move –points out the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar–, so that the music connects with the opera but also with the musical and film music” .
Tordera looks for the maximum vocal expansion of the soloists, associating each character to a certain style. Thus, he entrusts the soprano Rocío Martínez with the belcanto style; to the tenor Albert Casals, romantic heroism, or to Marta Infante, the most expressionist side. Other voices are those of Pau Armengol, Joan Sáez, Óscar Peñarroya and Dianne Ico, and for some of them Tordera works with the possibilities that the unimposed voice allows.
Some 70 associations and institutions from Raval have been part of the project with the close collaboration of the Fundació Tot Raval and the complicity of the Ciutat Vella District. And the entire neighborhood has been inserted into the process of artistic creation, including technical construction... or even if it was only giving up its space for rehearsals, such as La Paloma, where relatives of the participants have been able to attend, or the Macba, the CCCB, the Film Library, the Maritime Museum...
The Conservatori del Liceu puts on its orchestra, directed by Alfons Reverté, for whom the Liceu "has opened up and has given access to its guts: no one will see art and theater in the same way from now on". Adrià Pinar signs the scenery and the costumes bear the stamp of Montse Amenós, made by Top Manta and Dona Kolors, a project that gives training opportunities to women in situations of prostitution, whose director, Núria Casanovas, assures that "we had never participated in a opera and we didn't know what an opera meant... it has been a process carried out with great enthusiasm. It represents a lot that the Liceu collaborates with small entities in the territory”.
The general director of the Liceu, Valentí Oviedo, assures that it is time for the theaters to put into practice their desire for social transformation. "Accessibility is not just a figure of speech," he says, before listing the variables that have resulted from this experience.
One of them is the European project Traction, Opera cocreation for a social transformation, which considers culture and technology as key areas for an inclusive society. Another is Sínia, a center that cares for people with cerebral palsy and has collaborated with kids from the Escola Massa in making the posters.
"For the first time, the Raval schools have been part of the Petit Liceu project, which was created 25 years ago, and the Liceu Aprén", comments Oviedo, who announces that the project will continue to live through an artistic installation by Domestic Data Streamers and architects TAKK that can be seen in the Saló dels Miralls from 4 to 7. Oh, and a bulletin explains La Gata perduda in seven languages.
