EINA takes part in ÒH!PERA, Micro-operas of new creation

EINA participates in the project ÒH!PERA, Micro-operas of new creation with the work L'ocell redemptor (The redeeming bird), by the composer Fabià Santcovsky with the stage direction of Marc Chornet, and the scenography and costumes developed by the students of the Bachelor of Design Maria Arias, Anna Mas, Victor Moreno, Carla Poch, Mariona Pons and Abril Solsona, with the tutoring of Anna Alcubierre and Judit Colomer.

ÒH!PERA is an alliance between institutions and art and design teaching centres that translates into the creation and premiere of four small-format operas that will be performed during the same evening in different spaces of the Liceu (Foyer, Sala Miralls and Teatrí del Conservatori) on 9 and 10 July 2022. 

→ Check the programme. (Spanish version)

This project is promoted by the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona City Council's Department of Tourism and Creative Industries, Disseny Hub Barcelona and the design schools BAU, Elisava, LCI Barcelona, Massana and EINA. The initiative, under the artistic direction of Àlex Ollé, showcases the city's emerging talent in order to project it internationally, encourages experimentation and learning for students through a real experience and attracts new audiences to opera.

The lyric pieces to be performed will be: Shadow. Eurydice says at the Foyer, The Fox sisters at the Teatrí del Conservatori, Entre los árboles at the Foyer and L’ocell redemptor at Sala Miralls.

L'ocell redemptor poses a dystopia where the weight of the conflict falls on the technological universe as opposed to humanity. Using Debussy's opera as a reference, the author asks what "beauty" means when the world is built on a revulsive and solitary axis.

The project's scenographic proposal focuses on the creation of a transhumant imaginary, based on the idea of branching. It works with the aim of achieving an immersive experience, where through three characters, Melisanda, Bird and Placa, a mobile structure oriented at 360 degrees is generated. The protagonist is integrated into the central part of the device to which she is connected, as a channel through which the information takes place. As the plot progresses, the dynamism of the scenography allows it to become a reference of life and human consciousness.

To evoke a common imaginary, the image of the microchip is used as a starting point to create a "technological forest" made from waste, aluminium structures and wiring. A play of light with the space and the music is proposed, so that a synergy is established between the elements of the scenography and the sound, which is what carries the weight of the action. Finally, the bird is generated through enveloping visuals that respond to the sound stimuli.

In the words of librettist and composer Fabiá Santcovsky, "the poetic topos of a redemptive beauty and a dramatic transposition and reformulation of the character of Maeterlinck's Mélisande - interpreted here as a symbolic embodiment of infinite melancholy - are mixed in this opera where the stage space is the metaverse of information, in which we are immersed and integrated almost virtually and holographically".

In this sense, the staging, by Marc Chornet, evokes an artificial intelligence created to collect the data of all the fatalities of the world, and to synthesise them in the form of chronometrically measured periodicities, symbolising the statistical abstraction of all the events and problems of our current societies. A drama that in its background raises, in a mixture of science fiction, symbolist theatre and fable, the question of today's growing information synchrony without technological precedent and its tragic potential.

L'ocell redemptor counts with the participation of LCI, in the making of Melisanda's costumes; Pascualin estructures, Nouled.studio, Taxidermista: Tamara Ablameiko in the construction of the scenography; Rikard Lindström in the design of synesthesia (live); David Bofarull in the design of lights, and with the collaboration of Carme Gomila, Fundació Engrunes, Associació UdGeeks and Aplitec InformàXca.

Photos L'ocell redemptor: Paco Amate
Group photo: Toni Bofill