In search of the dream Liceu

Over more than four centuries, opera, as a porous and continuously evolving genre, has not ceased to integrate the most advanced technological contributions and the most pertinent challenges and concerns of each society.  

Opera also teaches us that all promises can be broken and that any "never" or "always" could become a "perhaps". It is in this constant state of fragility and fear in which man lives, that opera provides us with the inspiration for some necessary models or references.

The season we are bringing you is structured around the idea of pursuing a dream, and how striving to achieve it can lend meaning to our lives, bringing us closer to a scenario of happiness. Parents often teach us to keep our feet on the ground, but also to dream. This is not a contradiction, but it is essential to combine the two elements: satisfaction in the struggle to accomplish the desired challenge. DREAMING is therefore synonymous with healthy ambition and an emotional stimulus that, if well managed, can be an ally (although there is no guarantee that the goal will be achieved). The mere fact of focusing on it makes us attach value to it.  

And so, each night an extensive cast of characters strips down to their most intimate selves, to share their aspirations: Katarina and Sergei (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) and Violetta and Alfredo (La Traviata) fantasise about running away to celebrate their love far from the social prison; among the cherry blossoms, Cio-Cio-San longs to see the arrival of her Pinkerton on the USS Abraham Lincoln; Walter Benjamin in 1940, fleeing from Nazism and trapped in Portbou, commits suicide in an act of protest with a clear ideal of European freedom; and Rusalka yearns to abandon her difference in order to be united with the prince. A dose of utopia to persist in the fulfilment of this desire, understood as a life project.  

A collection of titles where emotional dreamscapes echo these longed-for DREAMS that slumber in all of us. The innocence and effervescence of the Liceu community searching for imagination springs from the threshold between reality and DREAM; the Coliseum on the Rambla, as a consequence, is a universe of sublime beauty and infinite possibilities. From Katerina Ismailova on her adventure to become free, to Elsa and Lohengrin, who embodies the feeling of limitless purity, this season allows us to explore the extent of these DREAMS and to recognise them in all of us.

DREAMS can often be hope born out of fear, and obviously one cannot be happy fleeing fear. We cannot trust those who blindly embrace their own certainties and cling to their aspirations with no regard for doubts and paradoxes. Ambiguity and contradiction are at the heart of life and therefore also at the heart of the season itself. As we head towards the first quarter of the 21st century, it is necessary to review the DREAMS we pursue as a society, to discover if we are really on the best path towards common well-being, without leaving anyone by the wayside.

Replete with the visions shared with Salvador Alemany, Valentí Oviedo, Josep Pons and Àlex Ollé, together with the outstanding group of artists, we begin a season in which we need to cultivate new fantasies and use all our imaginative resources to cultivate a new realm of Beauty at the Liceu. There is only one route through this labyrinth with no way out: to follow the faint light of our DREAM, which will give us back the ability to feel, to see and to know, the foundation of our Art. In keeping with the values and tradition of our institution, you are invited to the 24/25 season to continue creating a new world, pursuing your DREAM.

Víctor Garcia de Gomar

Artistic Director at the Gran Teatre del Liceu

Víctor Garcia de Gomar  
Director artístic del Gran Teatre del Liceu