Òh!pera

They are young and come from a variety of creative backgrounds: some are composers, some are playwrights, some are stage directors, others are musicians, singers, lighting specialists and technicians from the city’s schools. They are, in short, the voices and talents of contemporary opera for the immediate future. To give them a platform to show what they can do, the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the DHub, Disseny Hub Barcelona are staging three micro-operas by young composers, each lasting about half an hour. If you wander around the theatre in search of each performance, you will discover rehearsal rooms and spaces that are not as familiar as you thought. In these three pieces, up-and-coming technicians, creators and performers work together in a multidisciplinary style, a hallmark of the operatic world. Also involved are the partnerships formed by the composer Ferran Cruixent and the playwright Pau Miró (stage direction by Pol Roig); Guillem Palomar and the librettist, writer and journalist Laura Ferrero (stage direction by Ester Guntín); and finally, the composer Montserrat Lladó and the poet and writer Martí Sales as librettist (stage direction by Marta Gil Polo). The third key pillar of the project is the participation of students from several of Barcelona’s design schools (Elisava, BAU, EINA, Institut del Teatre) through the Disseny Hub.

Together they tell three stories that are very much in tune with the present day. In the first, Eliza, we meet a woman who discovers that her partner is an artificial intelligence capable of controlling her thoughts. In the second, Azul como una naranja [Blue like an orange], we are introduced to Sergei Krikalev, an astronaut who spent more than 300 days trapped in the Mir space station while his country, the Soviet Union, collapsed. The third piece, Contradir la nit [Contradict the night], takes us into the true depths of the city, following a pair of lovers on a journey through the underbelly and shady side of Barcelona. All are performed by young musicians and singers who are the most visible expression of tomorrow’s talent.

A Gran Teatre del Liceu and Disseny Hub Barcelona (DHub) production.