What is a classic if not an immortal book? And immortality is the focus of the fifth edition of the Clàssics Festival, which this Thursday inaugurated the exhibition Les aventures d'Ulisses in the gardens of the Palau Robert, with illustrations by Genie Espinosa and texts by Meritxell Blay based on his rereading of the Odyssey of Homer that has just been published in the Inuk publishing house. Why Ulysses? According to Sira Abenoza, director of La Casa dels Clàssics, because he “is a man who is offered the possibility of being immortal and rejects it.” The festival emphasizes a tempting theme but brought to the present, when technology explores ways to make us live longer without considering whether this will not make the world even more unequal, because, as Abenoza says, “we are human because we are mortal, compared to the gods and technology.”
Putting the texts in the center, you can attend the dramatized readings of L'anticrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche – by Pol López in the anatomical amphitheater of the Royal Academy of Medicine on November 17, and at the Planeta de Girona on December 7 – and Life of a Slave by Simone Weil – performed by Míriam Iscla on November 22 in the field hospital of the church of Santa Anna –, the same day that a concert has been scheduled in Sant Felip Neri based on the Poem of Gilgameix, by The Ministers of Pastime, recited by Laura Aubert.
On December 13, at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, a show as multidisciplinary as the festival: voice by Anna Maluquer, music by Montserrat Isanta and Marc Egea and drawings and projections by Joma, with the descent of Ulysses to the underworld: From Circe to Circe passant per l'Hades. And the next day we will be able to see Francesc Orella reading Plato's Defense of Socrates, with music by Rafel Plana in a setting for reflection: the Modelo prison.
If last year Raül Refree participated with a concert around the tarantella, in this edition he will perform with the Malian singer Rokia Koné based on mystics such as Inés de la Cruz, Saint Teresa and Hildegard of Bingen –December 15 at Santa Maria del Pi–, and the next day, as a closing event, at the CCCB, the show Pitó, based on the book by Guim Valls, a striking monologue by Paula Blanco directed by Roger Vila and music by Marina Herlop.
But if you want more reflection, this month there is the cycle El meu clásico, at the Free Arts Centre, and the dialogues at Sala Beckett.
Catalan version, here
