Tosca, one of the titles in the repertoire that performs best at the box office, has returned to Liceu to reach the figure of two hundred performances in the history ofthe Barcelona theatre. It has done so in a co-production between Liceu and other Spanish and European theatres under the direction of the young Sevillian director Rafael R. Villalobos, aspiring enfant terrible of today's operatic stage direction. Villalobos's Tosca is one of those that needs an instruction manual...

35 years after having last appeared at Liceu, Puccini's Trittico has returned to its stage. It has done so in a 2017 Munich Opera production directed by Lotte de Beer. Achieving a visual and dramatic union in a single production of three titles as different as those that make up Il Trittico is not at all easy, the Dutch stage director half succeeds at it. De Beer takes death as a thread: in the first opera, a passionate thriller, there is a murder; in the second, a melodrama, we...

Il Trovatore, the opera that is supposed to be performed in A night at the opera (1935), the immortal Marx brothers film, has always been called in modern - and not so modern - times a surviving opera in the repertoire thanks to its musical excellence despite its deliriously absurd and exaggerated plot. In this sense, its companions in the 'popular Verdian trilogy', Rigoletto and Traviata, benefit from supposedly higher quality arguments. That is not true, Il Trovatore,...

It is difficult to achieve great success when singing or conducting Don Pasquale, but it is also difficult to fail. Don Pasquale, the last capolavoro of opera buffa, is a comfortable and friendly work which does not present major problems. Vocal requirements are important though perfectly acceptable for professional singers and the same goes for the orchestral part. The work is not one of those mythical titles in the repertoire that make or break a career. There are devotees of...

It tends to be the case, at least at Liceu, that in premiere nights musically the performances start off being a little wobbly and, sometimes, with luck they end well. Norma, the last opera for this season, wasn’t an exception. At the beginning there were many issues in all musical areas, but it ended reasonably well. The problem lies in the fact that in Norma the best musical numbers, the shiny ones, are located at the start of the piece and we couldn’t enjoy them...

David McVicar’s production of Die Zauberflöte commissioned by London’s Covent Garden was premiered almost 20 years ago and it has now reached Liceu after touring the world and becoming a reference amongst the many stagings of Mozart’s Singspiel in the last decades. This wasn’t Liceu’s first choice, however, as when the season – now almost over – was first announced it featured a production form the Dutch National Opera signed by Simon...