Philip Glass’s Akhnaten has at last reached the Gran Teatre del Liceu, in what was also its Spanish premiere. Composed in 1983 by the Baltimore-born composer, the opera centres on the figure of the pharaoh - husband of the celebrated and photogenic Nefertiti - who sought to establish monotheism in fourteenth-century BCE Egypt, only to fail in the face of fierce opposition from the priestly caste whose privileges his reforms threatened. Structured in three acts charting the...

The use of a narrative, discursive or argumentative strategy based upon making animals speak is almost as ancient as culture itself. From Aesop to Disney, passing through La Fontaine and Orwell, the device of granting human language to animals has been employed in various ways and for various purposes, yet almost always with an educational aim - education meant in its broadest sense. In one way or another, we are all children of Disney. How many childhood tears, crucial to our emotional...

Fairy tales and witches are often – sugar-coated in disguise – terrible narratives full of anguish, loneliness, and fear. Beneath the barely concealed veneer of culture, they pulse with our “dark sides”, our most disorderly desires, alien to any moral framework. This is why it is so educational and necessary to tell these stories to our children from an early age, so they can name and shape their fears to grow up healthy. We must give a name and face to our fears...

In the program booklet, Calixto Bieito stated regarding his work as stage director of Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Liceu that “the best lie is the truth,” referring to the fact that he does not judge but merely presents the grotesque absurdities of the real world with clarity, and does so through opera—if anyone is to learn something from it, let them do so. Applied to Giulio Cesare, this means presenting the characters as an extravagant tribe of super-millionaires...

The success that Nadine Sierra achieved last January with La Traviata was already enormous, but what she has achieved now with La Sonnambula is even greater and consecrates her as the new undisputed queen of the Liceu. Sierra has it all: her voice is beautiful, warm and lyrical in the centre, brilliant and sharp at the top, her breath control is exceptional, and her projection is optimal. She has an easy stratospheric treble, regulates the dynamics exquisitely in any area of the...

Thomas Mann, in one of the most famous cases of audio-visual synaesthesia, stated in a letter to visual artist Emil Pretorius that Lohengrin’s sound is ‘silvery blue’. It may be so. Josep Pons, the great triumph of the premiere night achieved Lohengrin’s beautiful silvery blue sound. Pons, the principal conductor at Liceu’s Orchestra since 2012, achieved with this Lohengrin one of the best performances of the orchestra in the last few seasons. The ensemble...