What is a classic but an immortal book? And immortality is the focus of the fifth edition of the Classics Festival, which this Thursday opened the exhibition The Adventures of Ulysses in the Jardins del Palau Robert, with illustrations by Genie Espinosa and texts by Meritxell Blay based on the rereading of Homer's Odyssey that has just been published by 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 refuses it". The festival emphasizes a delicious but relevant theme, 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, against the gods and technology”.
Putting the texts in the center, it will be possible to attend the dramatized readings of The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche - by Pol López at the anatomical amphitheater of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Barcelona on November 17, and at the Planeta in Girona on December 7th - and Simone Weil's Life of a Slave - by Míriam Iscla on November 22nd at the field hospital of the Church of Santa Anna -, the same day that has been scheduled in Sant Felip Neri a concert based on the Poem of Gilgamesh, by The Ministers of Pastime and with a recital by Laura Aubert.
On December 13, at the Biblioteca de Catalunya, a show as multidisciplinary as the festival itself: Anna Maluquer's voice, music by Montserrat Isanta and Marc Egea and drawings and projections by Joma, with Ulysses' descent into the underworld : From Circe to Circe passing through 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 thought-provoking setting: the Model prison.
If last year Raül Refree participated with a concert around the tarantella, this edition will perform with the Malian singer Rokia Koné based on mystics such as Inés de la Cruz, Santa Teresa and Hildegard of Bingen – December 15 at Santa Maria del Pi–, and the next day, as a finale, at the CCCB, the Pitó show, based on the book by Guim Valls, a shocking 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 Center de les Arts Lliures, and the dialogues at Sala Beckett.
