The 2025-2026 season of the Gran Teatre del Liceu is structured under the motto "The Unpredictable", a natural continuation of the previous one ---"Chasing a Dream"--- in which one was invited to embrace the uncertainty of an aesthetic experience to go beyond rational understanding, or at least challenge it. In a suggestively counterintuitive way, the current proposal dares to celebrate that which escapes all explanation. And it is that music ---all the more so if it has a scenic representation--- constitutes an ideal tool to promote the encounter or connection with oneself.
Semi-consciously or openly subliminally, it illuminates the most hidden and neglected areas of our psyche. As a temporal phenomenon, it perpetuates itself in an instant whose meaning lies in ceasing to be: in the duration and permanence of the ephemeral. This magnetism of the unpredictable will be experienced as a déjà-vu in the programmed operas through the experience of a beauty or a terror that force the spectator to see themselves seeing from their seat, feeling ---at the same time--- in the tectonic epicenter of the represented tensions.
Those responsible for the programming recall in their presentation of the season the fleeting nature of sound, inviting us to live each performance as a unique, unrepeatable event. It opened on September 20 with Leoš Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, an opera directed scenically by Barrie Kosky and musically by Josep Pons, in his last season at the helm of the Liceu orchestra. Far from following a classical narrative, the opera is presented as a sound forest where the characters seem to breathe ---and, thus, sing--- in the language of nature. The porosity of the line that supposedly separates the human and the animal is expressed with an ambiguity that transports one to a dreamlike world, in which rational logic is disrupted and the linearity of time is diluted.
Here, the unpredictability of forms and sounds is not only a dramaturgical strategy, but it becomes a sensory experience: that of the mystery that cannot be fully understood, but which is undoubtedly sensed, like the primordial murmur that, in the presence of the incomprehensible monolith, facilitated the transformations of the spirit in Kubrick's 2001, musically animated by the symphonic poem of Nietzschean Zarathustra.
The mythical worldview is invoked in Philip Glass's opera Akhnaten ---from October 16 to November 3--- with sound means that suggest timelessness, due to the characteristic tendency to eternal return of its musical patterns. Directed by Karen Kamensek and with stage direction by Phelim McDermott, the Liceu stage will host a hypnotic recreation of ancient Egypt, starring Anthony Roth Costanzo and Rihab Chaieb. The opera immerses us in a time that seems not to advance in a straight line, accompanied by the juggling ---impossible movements, true visual enigmas--- that the Gandini Juggling company will display. With its enveloping musical language, Glass's minimalism disrupts historical narrative to offer the experience of a perpetual present, both same and different, reinvented in each sound repetition.
However, if there is a perennial principle or energy that is perfectly inexplicable, in the infinity of iridescences it presents, it is love. The comic exploration of its incomprehensible reality is undertaken in Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, an opera scheduled from November 22 to December 15, 2025, with musical direction by Diego Matheuz and stage direction by Mario Gas. The cast, sensational in its different turns, brings together Pretty Yende and Serena Sáenz in the role of Adina, as well as Javier Camarena and Michael Spyres as Nemorino, with Ambroggio Maestri and Fabio Capitenucci characterizing the eccentric dottore Dulcamara. A romantic comedy that opens with a reference to regina Isotta, with the "elixir," potion or filter that induces love, a metaphor for the enigmatic and ungovernable power of desire, and its transformative potential: the unpredictable arises from the interplay between reality and fantasy, in a twist that only the magic of theater can achieve.
As if by magic, in fact, Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde will be heard next ---from January 12 to 31, 2026--- under the direction of Susanna Mälkki and the stage design of Bárbara Lluch. Lise Davidsen and Clay Hilley take on the main roles, with Irene Theorin ---here Brangäne--- also in the cast, who, in the last staging of the work at the Liceu in 2018, overwhelmed those present with her characterization of the protagonist. The transfiguration occurs in a ductile time, in feedback with space, where death and amorous ecstasy merge. A semantic fusion that banishes logic already in Tristan ---the beginning of the spiritualization of eros that will culminate in Parsifal with the oxymoron of "the wound that heals"--- and that is musically conveyed as infinite longing. A passion that burns, but does not consume; rather, it opens the doors to a transcendence with Platonic reminiscences, albeit imbued with romantic pathos.
A triad of operas offers variations of the amorous experience, starting with Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda, from February 16 to March 2. The stage direction will be by Romain Gilbert, in a co-production of the Liceu and the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, while Daniel Oren will lead the local orchestra. The Venetian setting of this story of desire, jealousy, and betrayals alternates the festive character of the Serenissima with an austere ---even gloomy--- arrangement of the canals, in black and white.
The fatality of impossible loves will be rediscovered in Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut, from March 17 to April 1. Based on the fiction of Abbé Prévost ---with educational pretensions at the time of its appearance, 1731--- it acquires at the end of the 19th century a patina of the most hurtful romanticism. With the stage direction of Àlex Ollé and under the baton of Josep Pons, this production features soprano Asmik Grigorian and tenor Joshua Guerrero.
If that work narrates the emotional journey of a woman trapped between desire and freedom, Jules Massenet's Werther ---with Xabier Anduaga, musically directed by Henrik Nánási and staged by Christophe Loy, from May 2 to 17--- represents the staging from a masculine perspective of a no less paradoxical passion. Goethe recognized that writing the novel had been a thaumaturgical experience for himself, by splitting into a fictional character whose passion was unrequited ---like himself, biographically--- whom he led to the tragic end that, through artistic sublimation, he was able to avoid. Not so, however, the legion of lovers who followed the paths of the unfortunate Werther.
That confrontation with the inner abyss, with the vertigo of a necessarily unsatisfied desire ---it attracts without remission and threatens with self-destruction, a black hole of emotional life, while intensifying the sensation of reality--- is re-encountered with a much lighter tone in Le mariage de Figaro, ou la folle journée; the subversive comedy of errors that Caron de Beaumarchais conceived in 1778, eleven years before the fall of the Ancien Régime, and which has given rise -a very personal opinion- to some of the best operas of all time.
Wolfgang A. Mozart's version returns to the Barcelona opera house, in the final stretch of the season, with the musical direction of the always effervescent Giovanni Antonini and a set design ---a work by Marta Pazos--- that makes the kaleidoscopic topicality of current romantic possibilities resonate; as well as, also, social tensions ---due to gender inequalities and the lust for power---, critically made visible through an exchange of identities as unpredictable as it is symptomatic. Deceptive and revealing, a similar game of masks unfolds in the other works that Mozart created in collaboration with Da Ponte, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. Operas in which humor coexists with tragedy, as the worst, undesired ---and, thus, unthinkable--- expectations are fulfilled; they are confirmed as prophetic projections of the subject himself, falsely autonomous as he himself remains subject to it.
"Verdi attempts an alchemist's transformation: although life slips through his character's fingers, he enables a path to acceptance"In this sense, well into the following century and having verified the cracks in the enlightened project ---with a foot dangerously placed in the cynical discourse, which would justify the protagonist's decadence--- theFalstaffVerdiano will put the finishing touch to the season, with an ironic celebration of the fall. It will be one of the last opportunities to enjoy the direction of Josep Pons, in a staging by Laurent Pelly and a cast headed by Luca Salsi and Ambrogio Maestri, which features names as beloved by the Liceu audience as Daniela Barcellona, or the consecrated ---despite her youth--- Serena Sáenz. In his last opera,Verdi seems to rehearse a transformation worthy of an alchemist.Although life slips through his character's fingers, he enables a healing path: the acceptance of the unpredictable truth that the distorting mirror in which we see ourselves returns to us.
Symphonic farewells with Mahler, and the opening to other formats
In parallel, the symphonic season at the Liceu highlights the contribution of Josep Pons, who after fourteen years bids farewell with the end of the cycle dedicated to Gustav Mahler.His virtues as a conductor especially shine in majestic works, those that question the classical balance and, approaching contemporaneity, summon multiple registers and sound resources.Traversed by introspection and choral ecstasy, the enormousEighth("Of the thousand") andNovena---respectively July 4 and March 31--- delve into the mystery of life and death; they stand as monumental meditations on existence, memory, or the sense of belonging in a world he intuited was in a process of decomposition. Issues to which he was especially sensitive, and which his cosmogonic reconfigurations ---the nine symphonies he completed--- exemplify, experimenting with extrasensory transcendence through sound vibration practically from the beginning of his journey, already in theSecond, "Resurrection".But the season also opens to the programming of smaller and more accessible formats, to special concerts in which ancient works are discovered or samples of the most contemporary creation are disseminated: Monteverdi madrigals interpreted by the absolute authority of the genre, Rinaldo Alessandrini, at the head of his Concerto Italiano, as well as the Constelaciones project, with ensembles created by members of the Liceu orchestra, on three different dates.
Also noteworthy is the presence of Jordi Savall, who will interpret the "Trujillo del Perú" Codex, or the concert version of two works by Händel: his Orlando, by another authority of ancient music, such as Mark Minkowski at the head of Les Musiciens du Louvre, and the dramatic oratorio Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, by Réné Jacobs, conducting the Kammerorchester Basel. In radical contrast, the Bestiari concert brings together in the Foyer contemporary composers as renowned as Benet Casablancas, Joan Magrané, Raquel García-Tomás, Ramon Humet and Hèctor Parra, in an exploration of the strange, the dissonant, the untamed.
The power of dance, and the freedom of the present perfect
Dance is integrated into the Liceu season as an essential complement, by staging a dialogue that expands the musical experience towards body movement and the semiotics of gesturality.The company Bayerisches Staatsballett presentsGiselle, a classic of romanticism that brings us back to the original aesthetic, in contrast with the wonderful update we were able to enjoy a few years ago ---also at the Liceu--- with the daring choreography by Akram Khan.In this direction, undoubtedly more transgressive, the current season includes Marina Abramović's Balkan Erotic Epic, a work that interprets the body as a territory of the unpredictable; where the folkloric and desire intertwine in a tension that challenges the spectator, urging them to inhabit the uncomfortable and the unknown. The show Nijinsky, choreographed by John Neumeier, recreates the genius and fragility of the iconic dancer. Finally, the Grand Dance Gala brings together emblematic fragments of the classical repertoire, which will be interpreted by some of the leading figures on the world stage, exhibiting virtuosity at the service of emotion, in the aforementioned ---but always somewhat unpredictable--- dialogue between music and body.
The music that animates movement becomes a place of resistance against the logic of control, a space for wonder and emotion. Protected under the motto "the unpredictable," the Liceu season reminds us that artistic experience does not only provide answers, or mere entertainment; it seeks to shake, question, bring up uncomfortable questions that can also be confronted ---sometimes even better--- within the framework of an aesthetic display, and that in a semi-conscious way accompany us after the last applause.
It is in the openness to chance, in the unanticipated gesture of the performance, where music reveals its power, through the resonance it perpetrates. The silence of the hall, like the darkness, enables a space of freedom where the spectator does not only perceive sounds, movements or words. Unlike what happens outside ---in places where the free exchange of signifiers is not even prudent--- here one can let go of control and allow oneself to be surprised by the experience of one's own pulse, in the present of a new and unrepeatable connection with oneself, potentially transformative.