To pursue a dream, but not only to materialize it, but for the tension that is produced between oneself and that utopian longing. This is the ambition around which the Gran Teatre del Liceu revolves its 2024/2025 season, with an eclectic program full of stories that have a dream as their engine, and that range from Lady Macbeth to La Traviata, passing through Rusalka and the truncated desires of Walter Benjamin in Portbou. In total, there will be 206 performances, which will include 13 opera titles, another 13 concerts or recitals, three dance shows and 11 activities in other halls of the Liceu.
The invitation to dream launched by the lyrical theater is accompanied by acclaimed figures from the operatic scene, and international conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Giovanni Antonini, Paolo Bortolameolli, Marc Minkowski, Giacomo Sagripanti, René Jacobs, Antoni Ros-Marbà, Francesco Corti, Jordi Savall, William Christie and Rinaldo Alessandrini, in addition to Josep Pons, principal conductor of the Liceu. As announced in January, Pons will leave the Liceu in 2025 and will be the new conductor of the German Deutsche Radio Philarmonie, and the Liceu is studying with the artistic team and Pons himself "who will be the right person and team to continue his work."
This was explained by the president of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Foundation, Salvador Alemany, together with Pons himself; the general director, Valentí Oviedo; the artistic director, Victor Garcia de Gomar, and the resident artist, Àlex Ollé, at the presentation of the season's program. During this, first-rate voices will pass through the Liceu such as Nadine Sierra, Javier Camarena, Ermonela Jaho, Lise Davidsen, Iréne Theorin, Julie Fuchs, Juan Diego Flórez, Marina Rebeka, Piotr Beczała, Ekaterina Semenchuck, Martin Muehle, Anna Prohaska, Sara Jakubiak, Pavel Černoch, Sondra Radvanovsky, Maria Agresta, Artur Ruciński, Brian Jagde, Sonya Yoncheva, Ludovic Tézier, Asmik Grigorian, Karita Mattila, Matthias Goerne, Elisabeth Teige, Annalisa Stroppa, Klaus Florian Vogt, Matthew Polenzani, Marina Viotti and Emiliano González Toro.
The Liceu faces the next season with a global budget in revenues of 54.8 million, two million more than the current oneThe more than 200 proposals with which the Liceu has built its 2024/2025 program also include great national voices, such as Xabier Anduaga, Saioa Hernández, Ruth Iniesta, Xavier Sabata, Serena Sáenz, Celso Albelo, Ángeles Blancas, Gemma Coma-Alabert, Gerardo Bullón, and José Antonio López. The new season will also be marked by the aesthetic proposals of some of the most relevant stage directors internationally, such as Ollé himself, as well as Romeo Castellucci, David McVicar, Katharina Wagner, Calixto Bieito, Bárbara Lluch, and Christof Loy.
The season will kick off on September 25 with Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, presented precisely by Ollé and musically directed by Josep Pons. With the voices of Sara Jakubiak and Pavel Černoch, it is one of the Liceu's brand new productions, which will serve to inaugurate a season that will also feature Benjamin a Portbou, by Antoni Ros-Marbà, and Wagner's Lohengrin as theater productions. With stage direction by his great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, it will return to the Liceu after having to be canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The season will also include co-productions such as Dvorák's Rusalka, Bellini's La Sonnambula with Bárbara Lluch's stamp, and the story between Caesar and Cleopatra from Händel's Giulio Cesare by Calixto Bieito. The Liceu also co-produces a new dance show with the music of Gluck's Sémiramis and Don Juan, with Jordi Savall leading the Orquestra Le Concert des Nations and the Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse. The program also includes highlights such as a West Side Story directed by Dudamel, the Ballet Nacional de España show Afanador, conceived by Marcos Morau, Verdi's La Forza del destino and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, among the more than 200 proposals that the grand theater will offer to Barcelona during the season.
Beyond music, and within the framework of the Liceu de les Arts project promoted by Garcia de Gomar four years ago, the Liceu will act as a loudspeaker for other artistic disciplines that it will link to opera. The photographs of the prestigious Sebastiäo Salgado and his involvement in the defense of the Amazon will star in the Amazônia concert, while William Kentridge will mix his work with Shostakovich's tenth. The poems by Míriam Cano and the exhibitions by Inma Femenía and Antoni Tàpies for the centenary of his birth will complete a program in which Gerhard Richter stands out, who has served as the visual artist for the artistic program, and who will dialogue with Schumann and Schubert in the concert Dichterliebe.
From the beach sand to the Sagrada Família
The Liceu does not stay only in the Liceu. Still within this season, it will land on the beach with Dudamel as part of the America's Cup with a concert on July 12. It will be a unique event in which the Argentine conductor will direct pieces from John Williams' soundtracks, as Oviedo recalled. It is still in doubt whether the event, called to acquire an international dimension, can be retransmitted or recorded, due to the lack of agreement between the Liceu and its artistic bodies on audiovisual rights, in an area that is being worked on and "maturing".
Alemany predicts that the future Liceu Mar will generate "an impact on the skyline of the port and of Barcelona"The Liceu will also leave the walls of the great theater next season, which will include a new event reserved for those under 35 with the Requiem by Mozart in the Sagrada Família. This exceptional event in a privileged setting will offer free tickets to be acquired through a raffle open to all under 35. Thus, it will not be limited to the Liceunder35 community, which currently has about 23,000 young people.
"We want a new generation to be inspired by what Gaudí and Mozart imagined," proclaimed Oviedo, who expressed confidence that the initiative will serve to "connect with an entire generation of young people marked by the frustration of the millennials and the irreverence of the Z's." This event is part of the Liceu's commitment to bringing opera closer to the public, something it also does with programs such as Opera between Generations and Liceu Petit, which in the upcoming season will offer five shows: La Petita Flauta Màgica, La Cuina de Rossini, Trencanous-jazz, La Barcarola and Miralls.
A debt-free Liceu
Just as the current Liceu season has allowed it to leave behind the 16 million euro debt it had been carrying since 2013, the 2024/2025 season will be the theater's first without debt, as it will begin having also canceled the debt acquired during the pandemic. Overcoming this debt will represent a turning point for the theater, not only by freeing itself from its financial burden, but because it will be able to allocate the nearly 1.5 million it has annually dedicated to facing it to other matters, such as repairs and maintenance. According to Alemany, this includes "everything a building needs to do after 25 years of having been rebuilt" after the great fire that devoured it in 1994.
These needs include repairs and also work to update the building, such as its digital transformation, with projects that will include investments amounting to up to 10 million euros, Oviedo detailed. After repaying the last euro of debt on August 31, the Liceu will not only be able to allocate its projected surplus to this improvement of its building: "An important part of having been able to clear the debt is being able to invest in new productions and that we can decide which works we want to bring forward."
The Liceu faces the next season with a global budget in revenues of 54.8 million, two million more than the current one. Within the global budget, the artistic project has a budget of 15 million, and the educational and social expenditure is 1.2 million. Of these funds, the patronato administrations contribute 48% of the budget, while 52% corresponds to the theater's own income. Alemany has highlighted the fact that own income is above public subsidies: "It represents good news for stability."
For this new season, the Liceu has set the goal of increasing revenues by 3% through the sale of subscriptions and tickets, as well as factors such as an increase in private contributions as a result of the extensions of tax deductions with the new patronage law. In this line, the Liceu aims to go from 6.7 million to 7.2, Oviedo detailed.
The season will include an exceptional event reserved for those under 35 with Mozart's Requiem in the Sagrada FamíliaThis will to grow revenue is also reflected in the area of subscribers. The Liceu, which currently has 10,500 subscribers, aims to maintain the sustained growth of recent years, and gain 2,500 new subscribers next season. "When in most of Europe subscriptions are falling, we are going up every year," Oviedo celebrated. The Liceu, which closed last season with 273,000 spectators, has about 17% tourist audience, and plans to place this figure around 20% when the current season ends.
Closer to Liceu Mar
Liceu's future prospects will be marked by one of its most relevant projects for the coming years: opening its second headquarters in Port Vell. What will be known as Liceu Mar, with about 900 seats, has an agreement with the Port of Barcelona already confirmed, and is preparing the launch of the architectural competition.
Pending the announcement of what the winning project of this competition will be like, Alemany has predicted that it will generate "an impact on the skyline of the port and of Barcelona". Regarding this impact, Oviedo has argued that the internal functionality of the new theater should be prioritized, and not so much its appearance and facade. "It has to be very well thought out for the needs we have and for it to be very useful," he said about the new headquarters, which will occupy the space left by the old Imax Port Vell and where the America's Cup Experience is now being built.