The visual artist William Kentridge returns to the Gran Teatre del Liceu with 'Oh to Believe in Another World'. The artist has created a film that accompanies Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, which will be performed by the Liceu Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its chief conductor, Josep Pons.
On October 18 (Under35 performance) and 19, the visual artist William Kentridge returns to the Gran Teatre del Liceu with 'Oh to Believe in Another World'. The artist has created a film that accompanies Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, which will be performed by the Liceu Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its chief conductor, Josep Pons.
After his success with the production of Wozzeck, Kentridge offers a prophetic vision with his distinctive style, pursuing the ideal of a more just world. Kentridge’s cinematic aesthetic is based on the history of the medium itself, from stop-motion animation to early special effects. Drawing, particularly the dynamic of erasing and redrawing over it, has been a central element of his numerous works in animation and film, where layers of meaning unfold only through the process of their creation.
After his stage production of The Nose by Shostakovich for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Kentridge returns to the composer to create this animation set in an apparently abandoned Soviet museum made of cardboard and situated on a table in an artist's studio. A journey through the various rooms of the museum, which include a community theater room, a public swimming pool, and a quarry, surrounded by figures such as Mayakovsky, his lover Lilya Brik, Trotsky, Shostakovich as a student, his pupil Elmira Nasirova, Stalin, and Lenin. Puppets in a setting that must be understood as collages.
Far from turning Shostakovich into a soundtrack for the film, this session presents the complex relationship between the composer and the Soviet State, covering four decades in perspective: from the days of the 1917 Revolution to Stalin's death in 1953, passing through Lenin's death, Mayakovsky's suicide, and Trotsky's assassination. A time that Shostakovich, against all odds, managed to survive.
In parallel with the Liceu concert, on October 17, the artist will be in conversation with writer Julian Barnes at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), and on October 18, he will give the talk "Art that Makes Sense," aimed at secondary school students. Additionally, on October 19, the Sorigué Foundation in Lleida will open an exhibition at 12pm exploring Kentridge's creative universe, based on its collection, the largest of the artist's in Europe.
