Columns linked to Gran Teatre del Liceu

Good Music and Too Much “Maschera” For This “Ballo” at the Liceu

Xavier Pujol

The high musical level reached in Un Ballo in maschera that in the last days has been offered at Liceu has managed to bring success to the performances, which otherwise  in the strictly theatrical scope would have been a failure. The main merit in the triumph of this Ballo must be attributed to maestro Riccardo Frizza, who managed to get the orchestra to offer one of the best performances of the season. Frizza got from the instrumental ensemble the relatively restrained, intimate...


Calixto Bieito’s Old Carmen Still Full of Strength at the Gran...

Xavier Pujol

The Liceu has opened the year with a revival that is also a birthday party. In 1999, the Peralada Festival commissioned Calixto Bieito to stage direct a new production of Carmen. In 2010 and 2015 this Carmen, which has travelled to more than 70 theatres around the world, could be seen at Liceu. Now, on the 25th anniversary of the premiere, it has returned once again to the Barcelona stage. Carmen was the title that placed Bieito's name in the international panorama of opera...


Good Old Turandot Triumphs Again

Xavier Pujol

For an opera production, 25 years is an almost venerable age. Few manage to reach it. On the eve of the year in which the centenary of Puccini's death will be commemorated on the one hand, and on the other, the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the theatre after the fire that destroyed it in 1994, the Liceu has once again revived the production of Turandot with which it reopened in 1999 and which had already been remade in 2005 and 2009. Ezio Frigerio (deceased in 2022) designed...


Antony and Cleopatra European Premiere

Xavier Pujol

Big day at Liceu. The Barcelona theatre hosted the European premiere of Antony & Cleopatra, the new opera by John Adams, premiered in San Francisco in September 2022 and soon to travel to Palermo and New York. The Barcelona performances had the added attraction of the presence on the orchestral podium of the composer himself, who was performing his work for the first time. In San Francisco the musical direction was in the hands of Eun Sun Kim, the theatre's chief...


Onegin, Solitude and Loneliness at the Liceu

Xavier Pujol

Gran Teatre del Liceu has inaugurated the new season by putting Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin on stage in a new co-production between the Barcelona theatre, Den Norske Opera in Oslo, which premiered the production in 2020, and Teatro Real of Madrid that will present it next season. This new approach to this surprising intimate wonder – Tchaikovsky called it "lyrical scenes" rather than opera – based on the novel of the same name in verse by Aleksandr Pushkin,...


L'Incoronazione Di Poppea at Liceu: The Triumph of Evil

Xavier Pujol

L’Incoronazione di Poppea, first performed in Venice in 1642, is unique in the history of opera, not because of its remarkable age or the high quality of its music, after all, there are other operas from the same years, and Monteverdi, the composer of the music, equalled and perhaps surpassed the level reached in this work in other immortal titles such as Orfeo or Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. If L'Incoronazione di Poppea is a unique work, it is because of its...