Nadine Sierra Heads an Outstanding Cast in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Royal Opera House

Sis solos soles (Six solos alone) consists of six brief monodramas for a female singer accompanied by a single instrument, moving between drama, tragedy and macabre comedy. These take place in six different domestic spaces at six points of the life cycle. This was an innovative proposal that Liceu, in co-production with Òpera de Butxaca I Nova Creació, offered to six contemporary composers to showcase the diverse lines of current musical creation. The project was due to...

... With such assertiveness Don Giovanni addresses the final number of the first act. This certainly seems to be the spirit of the Don Giovanni currently being staged at Liceu. The world is crumbling around them, but Don Giovanni and Liceu are firmly staying put. To bring Don Giovanni to the stage “could almost be defined as an act of cultural resistance”, stated publically a few days ago Víctor García de Gomar, the artistic director of the theatre in Barcelona....

Normality comes back at Liceu – a kind of normality which we now know will never be a return to the past. This is being done in a brave, slow and difficult way, both for the staff and artists as well as for the audience. Juan Diego Flórez was due to offer a recital at Liceu last May and, after the pandemic forced it to be rescheduled, it was eventually divided into two sessions, on the 21st and 23rd October, in order to accommodate every person that had bought a ticket in...

"perpetual music", a project initiated by Artists must speak, make music, and perform: that is their language, that is their soul. Even if it is not reflected in politics, art and culture are part of our society, and as much a part of our life as eating, drinking or breathing. Artists cannot survive without performances and have thus fallen into a deep existential crisis due to the Coronavirus crisis, with its...

The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaurmarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to...

Handel’s Susanna of 1749 takes its story from Chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel. Set during the Babylonian captivity, it sees Susanna’s husband Joacim have to leave her for a period. Two Elders of the community who are besotted with her use his absence as an opportunity to try to force themselves upon her while she is bathing. When, however, she resists their advances, in revenge they invent a story that they caught her in an adulterous act and she is consequently...