Especially memorable was the opening of Barcelona’s world-famous theater “Liceu”, where the first lockdown after the concert was done for a live audience, and for plants. “Concerto for biocen” – this name was for the first ever music event, “spectators” which were more than 2,200 a variety of household plants, located in the hall of the Liceu theatre. Such an unusual idea belongs to the Spanish painter-conceptualist of Eugenio Ampudia and it symbolizes the hard condition of mankind in the conditions of a pandemic COVID-2019, when, according to the art Director of theatre Victor garcía de Gomar, “the public is deprived of the opportunity to be the audience.”
the inaugural evening sounded an elegiac miniature of Giacomo Puccini’s “Chrysanthemums” performed by the string Quartet UceLi: listen to the musicians and to enjoy the magnificent view of the auditorium in which the green shades of the plants, on the idea of the artist, organically combined with the luxury of gold and red velvet, you could online anywhere in the world. After the concert, all the plants were donated by the local doctors of the city hospital: so, according to the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, the doctors got the flowers, “contaminated music”.
as for the Opera season at the “Liceo”, then it will resume in the fall and will open the first of October of Verdi’s Il Trovatore with Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov in the main roles.
Another well-known Opera house in Spain – Teatro real in Madrid opened its doors to the public in early July with the staging of La Traviata with Marina Rebeka and Michael Fabiano: because of the continuing danger of the disease the show was able to visit only 869 of the audience instead of 1700. But security measures and the distance had to abide by not only the audience but also performers. Singers and choristers were required to be not less than two meters away from each other, which is especially changed the staging of the crowd scenes. The orchestra also had to play in masks, a group of wind instruments was separated from the rest of the musicians with special plastic screens.
on July twenty-seven scheduled performances of “La Traviata” and a new Opera season will start in September with a production of another Verdi Opera – “masquerade Ball”.
