Romantic opera against the convulsions of the 21st century | Culture

Many analysts say that this first third of the 21st century can be defined as a period of profound decline. We live in a crisis of values ​​defined by an aggressive and exposed individualism, a gradual loss of the sense of our experience as human beings and of the capacity for intimate connection with the reality that surrounds it. In many respects, our globalized and accelerated societies are going through a phase of weakened romanticism, not different from the one we experienced in the first decades of the 19th century.

In this convulsive and most discouraging context, the Gran Teatre del Liceu of Barcelona premieres this opera most representative of original romanticism, The force of destiny, by the Italian maestro Giuseppe Verdi. Taking time to see the opportunity to gain perspective, to look at ourselves and reflect. L’opportunitat de retrobar-nos i entendre’ns. The work will arrive at the Barcelona Gran Teatre del Liceu on November 9th and will remain on the billboard from December 19th to December 19th. Made in collaboration with the Opéra International de Paris, it will be shared, among others, with You see the interpretations of Alejandro López, Saioa Hernández and Anna Pirozzi, the stage direction of Jean-Claude Auvray and the choreography of Terry Jones Bates.

It is also worth noting that October 25 is World Opera Day. Here, the celebration focuses on Italian opera, coinciding with the centenary of Puccini, who died on November 29, 1924. Here, it is in memory of great promoters of romanticism such as Bellini or the works of Puccini and Verdi.

The force of destiny dramatizes the ill-fated love story between the South American noble Don Alvaro and the Marquis of Calatrava’s daughter, Donna Leonora. It is plagued by accidental deaths, atonement trips, cruel misunderstandings, duels, vengeance, and outpourings of blood and tears. It is, without doubt, an accelerated course of extreme romanticism, rotund and eixelebrat. Here is the most romantic aferrissadament of Maduresa’s works by the great Italian representative of that cultural and artistic movement that will dominate the West in the first half of the 19th century. It is also the one that provides the most useful elements of reflection to those who are left perplexed by the evolution of the contemporary world.

Romantics with nosaltres

Romanticism will be a strong cultural reaction against academia, rationality and balance supported by neoclassical style. After the Il·lustració and l’anomenat Segle de les Llum (18th century), political and social tensions will produce a profound left, an internal revolution, a crisis of values ​​that will appear in romantic opera, one of the seven more refined aesthetic expressions.

After pioneers such as Gaetano Donizetti or Vincenzo Bellini, a second era full of romantic exacerbations will arrive, that of 1830, with Robert Schumann, Giacomo Mayerbeer or Verdi himself. The six works are tragedies dominated by the feeling of defeat of the raó against the passions and the atavique pors. The existential angoixa, the per cap a la fi del món, the cruel inexorability of destiny, the force of Nature, life conceived as an il·lusió or l’amor as an irresistible and destructive force are some of the seves thematic constants.

If we assume that for mateix we are living a warlike and good version of the old romanticism, we could anticipate that everything is cyclical. Review works with The force of destiny to help us better interpret the present. It could be the perfect opportunity to reflect on the perilous drift of our societies, that decadent and narcissistic negligence that has deprived us of cultural references and solid values, suffocated by economic demands, expelled from our cities by speculative dynamics, threatened by a dehumanizing technology that makes us feel dispensable, useless.

Verdi, while composing his greatest opera, is felt overwhelmed by the paralyzing melancholy so typical of romanticism, an acute feeling of loss of control of one’s own experience with which many of us could, of course, identify ourselves.

Verdi himself, while composing this great opera, is felt overwhelmed by the paralyzing melancholy so typical of romanticism, an acute feeling of loss of control of one’s own experience with which many of us could, of course, identify ourselves. Don Alvaro, the mestizo aristocrat rebutted by the family of the lady he esteems, falls for love into a series of involuntary transgressions and crimes that end up turning him into an unhappy joguine in the hands of destiny. Encouraged individualism, the poor perception of one’s own honor and the intensity of emotions become ingredients in the recipe for disaster.

The work is an adaptation of the most important Castilian drama of literary romanticism Don Álvaro or the force of fate, play by the Spanish writer Ángel de Saavedra, Duc de Rivas. Verdi and his usual librettist, Francesco Maria Piove, will turn it into a delightful opera in four of Verdi’s most precious scores. It premiered in Saint Petersburg in December 1862, when its composer was 49 years old.

In later years, Verdi would compile a reguitzell of works most late, making them more complete and reeixides of all his repertoire, from Don Carlos Shakespearean style Falstaff passant per Aida Yo Othello. But it can be The force of destiny the one that is most current and most important to see among our current concerns. The one that most remembers that romanticism, in addition to a fascinating aesthetic program, but that there is still a difference, was a vital attitude and a way of being at the same time not different, pel bo i pel dolent, of which we have developed many of us.