My family was very religious and, when I was 16, in an act of rebellion, I stopped going to mass. Over the years, I realized that people need something intimate.” These are the words of Lluís Homar, director of the National Classical Theater Company (CNTC), who is now coming to the Romea, “his Barcelona home”, as Josep Maria Pou, director of the theater, remembers, to present a select double program.
From yesterday until February 11, Alma y Palabra can be seen. Saint John of the Cross, a piece that is close to the work of the mystic. Lluís Homar and Adriana Ozores are accompanied by the piano of Emili Brugalla, who plays fragments of Música callada, by Frederic Mompou.
“Art is timeless,” declares the musician. There are some bridges that we have wanted to discover, such as combining San Juan with Mompou. If they had been born in opposite times, today Saint John would be an artist and Mompou, who was a very good person, would be a saint. The two multiply each other, also with the painting of Christ by Velázquez, and this helps to better enter these worlds. It transforms us.” It was Xavier Albertí, CNTC playwright, who proposed completing this show with Mompou's music.
Homar gives more clues: “We intend to bring these figures closer, to break that image that the mystics are separated, hanging. Because mystics can modify our lives for the better. Saint John is one of the great anti-systems, as were Gandhi and Mandela, both mentioned in the show. Saint John was in prison for wanting to reform the Discalced Carmelites and they themselves imprisoned him. He had neither paper nor pencil and there he began to compose the Spiritual Canticle from memory. Saint Teresa helped him escape.” And she adds: “With that will, we have put together this show. We talk about how these materials speak to us and reach us, and we talk from our personal experiences.”
Actress Adriana Ozores points out: “The most remarkable thing is Lluís' willingness to bring the mystics to our days. They are very far away and, on the other hand, they are not foreign to us. There is a consideration that runs throughout the show, and that is that art in three manifestations (music, painting and words) places us in a place where it is easier for us to move to a more intimate place. Mompou's music, Velázquez's Christ and the words of Saint John are unquestionable. “Art is a tool to discover our interior.”
This "mystical double program", as Homar calls it, is completed with El templo vacío, which is presented in Romea from February 13 to 18. In this case, the solo actor is accompanied by the vocal quartet formed by Manon Chauvin, Gabriel Díaz, Pablo Acosta and Lluís Frígola, who interpret music by Bach.
The word is from playwright Brenda Escobedo, who co-directs the show with Homar. It is a text filled with fragments taken from Ibn Arabi, Calderón de la Barca, Ramon Llull, Maestro Eckhart, Miguel de Molinos, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Angelus Silesius and Jacint Verdaguer.
“If dramatic poetry is already difficult to read, the lyrical poetry of the mystics is even more difficult,” says Escobedo. The temple is the soul and the void is the emptying of the ego. “All these writers are on the path of searching for individual faith.”
For the occasion, in addition to saying the texts of Llull and Verdaguer in Catalan, as he does throughout Spain, the actor will also say Escobedo's text in Catalan. “We have made our own version for this occasion,” concludes Homar.
Catalan version, here
