If the forecasts are fulfilled, at the end of the 2023-2024 season the Liceu will have finally settled its credit debts that it incurred 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 supersold productions on Christmas or summer dates, must guarantee clean accounts that allow the theater to face what is to come: the Liceu Mar.
"The port of Barcelona is ready to sign an agreement with the Liceu Consortium to call an international competition of ideas for the basic project of the urban design of the space occupied by the IMAX and the Liceu Mar building", Salvador Alemany, president of the lyrical institution, said yesterday. This call would be at the end of the year, although the space will not be available until the end of the America's Sailing Cup in the fall of 2024 (this, in the event that Barcelona does not repeat as its headquarters in 2026).
In this context, yesterday the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor García de Gomar, presented a season of 14 operas – nine staged –, four dance shows, 12 concerts and recitals (with tributes to Victòria dels Àngels and Alicia de Larrocha) , plus other proposals from the Liceu de les Arts. The visual artist Joan Fontcuberta illustrates the seasonal book and gives life to another Winterreise, this one in the great room; and Bob Wilson mounts a Messiah by Handel (in the version revised by Mozart) and exhibits work. In addition, Susanna Rafart is poet in residence and Lolo
The season will open on September 27 with Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky's opera with staging by Christof Loy and musical direction by Josep Pons, which was canceled due to the pandemic. From here, the course is an avalanche of operatic titles that combine the rarities of the past – this exclusive Médée de Charpentier that arrives from Berlin with Simon Rattle and Magdalena Kožená, in concert – with the brand new commissions for scores made by the high school This is: if the Real has shown Nixon in China, the first opera by John Adams, Barcelona premieres the last one in Europe, Antony
The other premiere - this one, absolutely - is the announced Orgia by Héctor Parra and Calixto Bieito, a creative tandem that pointed ways leading to the opera Les benignes by Jonathan Littell. Now they are making their home the book by Pier Paolo Pasolini (in co-production with Peralada and Bilbao) about a destructive relationship that ends with the suicide of the husband dressed as a woman, accusing society of being hypocritical and intolerant.
Other staged operas of the season are Adriana Lecouvreur de Ciléa, with editing by David McVicar and two pokers of vocal aces: Jonas Kaufmann/Freddie De Tommaso, Yoncheva/Buratto... De Tommaso will also star, with Anna Pirozzi and Sara Blanch , Verdi's Ballo in maschera that Graham Vick premiered, before he died of covid, in Palermo. And Javier Camarena will sing, perhaps for the last time with vocal flexibility, La Cenerentola.
The offer in concert is overwhelming: from the announced Fidelio with the L.A. Phil by Gustavo Dudamel that claims freedom, but also Beethoven's hearing disability (the Choir de Mans Blances using sign language), until this first act of La Valquíria that will be sung by the expected Lise Davidsen (without serving as a precedent , since it doesn't seem like he has to do Castellucci's Tetralogy). Davidsen will also perform in tandem with De Tommaso in a recital of vocal power.
René Jacobs will close the triptych of Orfeos (Monteverdi) with the Freiburger Barockorchester; Antonini's Il Giardino Armonico will address Haydn's Orlando Paladino with Núria Rial, Savall, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Pons, Bluebeard's Castle.
The theater's musical director will also be in charge of Stravinsky's ballet performed by Sasha Waltz ( Sacre ). The dance is for good luck. The Ballet de Genève, now directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, will show its Faun and Noetic. And the great heir to the choreographic art, the Swede Alexander Ekman, toasts A midsummer night's dream : Ballett Dortmund with the energy and mysteries conjured up by the summer solstice in the Scandinavian tradition. And finally a Swan Lake to make the box office - that of the Rome Opera Ballet - in July.
The 52.8 million euros of the budget (12% more than the previous season), gives for 199 functions under the motto: "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, and Cenerentola.
