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...

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...

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, 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...

The raw material for the show, Henry Purcell's opera Dido & Aeneas, was of the highest quality. The ensemble Les Arts Florissants led by its founder, William Christie, a world reference in the field of Baroque music performance, guaranteed a good instrumental and choral performance. The vocal soloists also seemed adequate. The intention was good: presenting Dido & Aeneas in a danced version seemed like a good idea, it has been done with this same title on other occasions...

The chorus sings its last phrase, the mysterious and enigmatic "Erlösung dem Erlöser" (Redemption to the redeemer) while greeting a Parsifal dressed more or less like a fascist dictator. Kundry, the Jewess, does not expire placidly after being baptized but, alarmed by what she sees and, above all, by what she foresees, she packs her bags and goes into exile, the curtain falls. The question is obvious: And now who will redeem us from Parsifal? Thus ends the Parsifal...