Music

Glorious shake-up of 'West Side Story'

Nadine Sierra and Juan Diego Flórez, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, officiate a triumphant season closing at the Liceu: emotion in abundance in the representation of Leonard Bernstein's most popular and timeless creation

12 august of 2025 at 10:17h

It has been said of La la land that it is a film too perfect and a bit saccharine, both in terms of script and performances, cinematography, music… And yet, in the end, a blow comes that dismantles even the toughest, by shattering the expectations of the happy end that many of us wish for our lives. In an exercise of metafiction that forces the viewer to attend to their own desires, the protagonists, seated in cinema seats in front of a screen, attend the screening of the happy life that can no longer be. That love appears to us all the more real in the space that imagination enables ---a semi-conscious canvas from which we see ourselves as protagonists of that their fantasy--- the more impossible it is to satisfy. The "La la land case" allows us to outline an explanation of why a story as topical as West Side Story still shakes us.

The shock generated at the Liceu by the concert version experience of the musical, for which Leonard Bernstein composed a handful of excellent themes in 1957, was so manifest that no time was left for silence to permeate, after the subtle beats of the percussion, with the flutes intoning the return of the lovers to an immaterial way of life. Applause rushed in, and Nadine Sierra was soon acclaimed.

It is the fourth production of the season in which the American soprano performs, whose imprint anticipated her image as a somnambulist on the frontispiece of the season's libretto ---which thus concludes--- under the motto Perseguint un somni. Uncontestable queen of the Barcelona stage for her charisma and magnetism, possessing a powerful and nuanced timbre ---genuinely friendly, moreover, in press conferences and in personal dealings---, she consecrated herself as the "María" we all expected. Her immersion in the role was sensational, astonishingly capable ---as always--- of bringing characters to life, of vibrating with them and enabling the viewer's own emotional experience.

"Uncontestable queen for her charisma and magnetism, Nadine Sierra confirmed herself as the María that the Liceu audience expected"
Nadine Sierra's gifts as an actress once again resulted in the beauty of her singing, especially brilliant in the self-celebratory theme I feel pretty, which she enriched with some well-measured improvisation; samples of a captivating spontaneity, which underpin the truth of what is sung. Alongside Juan Diego Flórez's Tony, they created a balanced couple, faithful to the spirit of the musical and the film, which, as is known, updates the Shakespearean tragedy. Those who confront each other are not Capulets and Montagues but a gang of "locals" and another formed by Puerto Rican immigrants (phylogenetically speaking, more autochthonous than the former). As in Bernstein's mythical recording with Carreras, those who characterize the American characters are, curiously, Latin artists. Flórez's singing, more contained than that of the always-expansive soprano, was convincing in his solo interventions and also in the group numbers. Thus, for example, in the polyphonic "Tonight," which brings together opposing worldviews and makes possible that alchemy of music ---its sensible-rational dimension, semantically undecidable and at the same time open to a plural signification--- which Bernstein already pointed out in the introduction to his popular compilation The Joy of Music. Jazz and humor in Romeo and Juliet Regarding jazz, so present in West Side Story, the composer valued its quality as a creative exchange, in the course of which the performer also becomes a creator. A genre that promotes freedom of expression in a humorous way, in potentially infinite dialogues: "I love it for its humor. It really plays [plays] with the notes. We always talk about playing [play] music, a term that perhaps applies better to tennis. But jazz is the true game (…). It is, therefore, entertainment in the most authentic sense".
"Jazz opens a space-time of exception, in which the individual experiences the fullness of the moment through dance or song"
Aware that some had criticized him for his popular and supposedly light nature, Bernstein values the truth conveyed by all ---thus, lightly--- that "entertainment." More than narcotizing the masses, as Theodor W. Adorno believed, it opens an exceptional space-time in which the individual experiences the fullness of the moment through dance or song; and with it, it enables the carnivalesque exchange or dissolution of identity, characteristic of ancestral celebrations that ---like participation in fictions--- produce a therapeutic effect.
Nadine Sierra's acting skills once again resulted in the beauty of her singing.
The performance at the Barcelona coliseum played the card of sound spectacularity, with a deployment of resources animated by Dudamel at the head of the Liceu Orchestra, which incorporated a portentosa sección rítmica, óptima para los pasajes de danza ---entre las cuales el conocido "Mambo", one of the favorite encores in his symphonic concerts---, as well as unusual instruments, some requiring amplification. The singers also benefited from this medium, as the Venezuelan maestro proposed a more natural declamation than a properly operatic one ---unlike the aforementioned Bernstein recording with Carreras and Te Kanawa---, enabling more agile and understandable dialogues. Between opera and musical, not only did the protagonists shine: the members of the rival gangs vindicated themselves as active participants in the plot ---outstanding were Isabel Leonard's Anita and Jarett Ott's Riff---; especially in that comic vis that numbers like America or Officer Krupkee inoculate, to lighten the drama's weight and prepare ---from the contrast of registers--- the impending impact, when death certifies the earthly impossibility of love. Moved by the emotional song Somewhere, that love in that we have lived fully but that can no longer be points to the beyond; whether maddening ---"from among the dead" tends to return actualizing the trauma of loss, ghostly as in Vertigo--- or consolingly, the fact is that nor can it cease to be completely. Plato suggested the flight of eros as a promoter of the return to a stage prior to corporeal life and to life itself, and currently ---from a scientific paradigm, a diametrically opposed narrative--- the consideration of what exists in terms of vibration or ubiquitous and indestructible energy is being proposed, with matter being only a way of manifesting itself. In any case, landing back in our more immediate context ---the interpretation of Liceu--- it meant a major surprise, kept secret until its very appearance, the ethereal intervention of Sondra Radvanovksy: a kind of goddessex machina, sent to atmospherically install that timeless truth.
"That love in which we have lived but which can no longer be, points to the beyond: unsettling or comforting, the fact is that it also cannot cease to be"
Timelessness and function of art today At the press conference prior to the concert, the artists had referred to the timelessness of West Side Story, and to the role of art in depicting conflicts for their possible reparation, or at least their social awareness. Gustavo Dudamel, who called it an "iconic" work, recalled that "it lends itself to being dimensioned in any form, it adapts to all moments," as it is "a timeless work that is lived with the same passion in any circumstance" and especially if we think about the place where it takes place, the United States from the current perspective. West Side Story ---continues the master--- "it shows the stone with which humans continuously stumble": the "struggle for a territory".
Gustavo Dudamel led the Liceu Orchestra, which incorporated a prodigious rhythm section, optimal for dance passages, as well as unusual instruments.
What is the reason for the obsession with power or possession? We wonder if the fever for external control does nothing but reflect the presence of an unresolved conflict within the individual himself, eventually wrapped in a flag or cause ---or in the role of victim--- that he brandishes to legitimize his less universalizable actions. All kinds of justifications ---Albert Camus suggested in The fall--- so as not to face the wound it has carried forever and from which it does not detach itself ---as its most precious possession--- for giving it an apparent identity: the mask from which it interprets reality and by which it believes it can be recognized. Dudamel concludes by pointing out that "something terrible has to happen for rivals to realize they are the same," beings split in search of solace, comfort, the certainty of being something stable or consistent in the face of the threat of change; and, ultimately, in the face of the atavistic fear ---nothing negligible--- of ceasing to be… In that same press conference, Nadine Sierra recalled moments from her biography to highlight the influence of a work like West Side Story in his training ---"it enriched my life, it brought values"--- at a time when there were no phones or social media, "distractions" that inevitably condition current generations.
"What is the reason for the obsession with power, with possession? We wonder if it doesn't reflect the presence of an unresolved conflict within the individual themselves"
Assuming the crisis situation ---after mentioning that, nowadays, a significant proportion of people in his native country ignore who Bernstein was--- the soprano dared to show hope by predicting a kind of "Renaissance" in music: "I think they need it, it could help people in the United States and around the world." Coda West Side Story is valid as an artistic representation of a symptom that affects every human being, that of the longing to return to a fullness never lived but remembered and is projected onto the person of the beloved, thanks to the mediation of eros: a divine principle would enable this return to original unity. "Hold my hand and we're half way there," sing the most complete lovers as individuals when walking together. These are not just Platonic daydreams or ---modernly speaking--- the umpteenth display of romantic nostalgia, like that which we have so often found in Hölderlin.
Nadine Sierra's Maria alongside Juan Diego Flórez's Tony created a balanced couple, faithful to the spirit of the musical and the film.
The history of West Side Story shakes because it questions ---have you loved, beyond your own life?--- in a much more effective way by employing musical vibration, which evokes a principle similar to that of love. A principle that does not deny death as such, but rather overcomes it, explicitly in the episode of the improvised union ceremony: "Make of our lives one life, / Day after day, one life. / Now it begins, now we start: / One hand, one heart. / Even death won't part us now". To fall in love to truly live, ex novo ---as if for the first time--- and even if it entails an irreparable loss, to taste the eternity that awaits us from before time.
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