If the forecasts come true, by the end of the 2023-2024 season the Liceu will have finally settled its credit debts that it contracted in 2012. The aid of half a million euros from each consortium administration next season –1.5 in total–, together with a program that includes best-selling productions on Christmas dates, must guarantee clean accounts that allow the theater to face what lies ahead: the Liceu Mar.
"The Port of Barcelona is willing to sign an agreement with the Consorci del Liceu to call an international ideas competition for the basic project of the urban design of the space occupied by the IMAX and the Liceu Mar building," Salvador Alemany, president, said yesterday. of the lyrical institution. This call would take place at the end of the year, although the space will not be available until the end of the Copa América de Vela in autumn 2024 (that is, in the event that Barcelona does not repeat as the venue in 2026).
Within this framework, the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar, presented yesterday a season of 14 operas –nine staged–, four dance shows, twelve concerts and recitals (with tributes to Victoria de los Ángeles and Alicia de Larrocha), plus proposals from the Liceu de les Arts. The visual artist Joan Fontcuberta illustrates the seasonal book and fleshes out another Winterreise, and Bob Wilson assembles a Messiah by Händel (in the revised version by Mozart) and exhibits his work. In addition, Susanna Rafart is a poet-in-residence and Lolo
The season will open on September 27 with Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky's opera with a staging by Christof Loy and musical direction by Josep Pons that was canceled due to the pandemic. From here, the course is an avalanche of operatic titles that combine the rarities of the past –that exclusive Médée de Charpentier that arrives from Berlin by the hand of Simon Rattle and the mezzo Magdalena Kožená in concert– with the brand new score commissions that The Liceu has done it: if the Real has shown Nixon in China , the first opera by John Adams, Barcelona premieres in Europe the latest, Antony and Cleopatra , an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy with a libretto by the same composer that combines ancient Egypt and the old Hollywood of Rex Harrison and Liz Taylor...
The other premiere – this yes, absolute – is the announced Orgia by Hèctor Parra and Calixto Bieito, a creative tandem that pointed out ways leading to the opera Las benevolas by Jonathan Littell. Now they are making their own the script by Pier Paolo Pasolini (in co-production with Peralada and Bilbao) about a destructive relationship that ends with the suicide of her husband, dressed as a woman, accusing an intolerant society.
Other operas staged this season are Adriana Lecouvreur de Ciléa, with an assembly by David McVicar and two pokers of vocal aces: Jonas Kaufmann/Freddie De Tommaso, Yoncheva/Buratto... De Tommaso will also star, along with Anna Pirozzi and Sara Blanch, in Verdi's Ballo in maschera that Sir Graham Vick premiered, before he died of covid, in Palermo. And Javier Camarena will sing, perhaps for the last time, due to vocal flexibility, La Cenerentola.
The offer in concert is overwhelming: from the announced Fidelio with L.A. Phil by Gustavo Dudamel who claims freedom but also Beethoven's hearing disability (with the Choir of White Hands using sign language), up to this first act of The Valkyrie that will be sung by the highly anticipated Lise Davidsen (without serving as a precedent, since it is not expected in the Tetralogy of Castellucci). Davidsen will also do a tandem with De Tommaso in a powerful vocal recital.
René Jacobs will conclude with the Freiburger Barockorchester the triptych of Orpheus, (the one by Monteverdi); Antonini's Il Giardino Armonico will address Haydn's Orlando Paladino (with Núria Rial...), Savall will direct Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Pons, Bluebeard's Castle.
The musical director of the theater will be in charge, in turn, of Stravinsky's ballet brought by Sasha Waltz (Sacre). The dance is in luck. The Ballet de Genève, now directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, will show its Faun and Noetic. And the great heir to choreographic art, the Swedish Alexander Ekman, offers A midsummer night's dream: the Ballett Dortmund with the energy and mysteries conjured up by the summer solstice in the Scandinavian tradition. And finally a food Swan Lake –from the Rome Opera– in July.
The 52.8 million euro budget (12% more than 2022-2023), provides for 199 performances under the idea/motto of the season: “Irrecoverable Cracks”. "Because the characters, the goddesses and heroes of the opera, are full of scars," says De Gomar. The Liceu will pass Onegin, Cleopatra, Turandot, Ballo and Cenerentola.
