Antoni Ros-Marbà premieres 'Benjamin en Portbou', his first opera

Barcelona"My motto is Albert Einstein's: life is like riding a bicycle, if you stop you fall," says Antoni Ros-Marbà (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1937). He speaks with enthusiasm, happy to be able to share the details of Benjamin in Portbou, the opera he composed, with a libretto by Anthony Carroll Madigan (1938-2020). It is Ros-Marbà's first opera, and it premieres at the Liceu, which is scheduling two performances on July 19 and 21. "Most likely it will be the first and the last, because I don't have that much time left. But you never know," he says. In fact, at 88 years old, he still pedaling, because he's working on a "very particular" requiem, from which he's removed "the horror parts" and replaced them with "poems by Catalan poets." The provisional title: Requiem in our sea.

"Antoni Ros-Marbà is a pillar of the country's music," says the artistic director of the Liceu, Víctor Garcia de Gomar, happy to be able to "celebrate the figure of the maestro" with the premiere of a "two-act opera that has been a very thoughtful work for 10 years," reports Ros-Marbà, who will conduct the Liceu Orchestra in both performances. To bring the opera to life, he has had the stage direction of Anna Ponces, the set and lighting design by Playmodes Studio and Andreu Fàbregas, and the costumes by Adriana Parra and Síl Peter Tantsits, who made his debut at the Liceu with Wozzeck the temperate 2021-2022, who plays the role of Walter Benjamin. "He's a very difficult character who is almost always on stage," explains Ros-Marbà about the protagonist of Benjamin in Portbou, an English-language opera that begins and ends with the death of the German philosopher in Portbou on September 26, 1940, as he fled Nazism and tried to find a way to Lisbon to catch a ship to the United States.

Benjamin is not alone in this opera. Other historical figures also appear, such as Dora Pollack, the philosopher's wife (played by mezzo-soprano Laura Vila); the philosopher Hannah Arendt (Marta Valero); the historian Gerhard Scholem (Joan Martín-Royo); the playwright Bertolt Brecht (David Alegret); and the theater director—and Benjamin's lover—Asja Lacis (Elena Copons). Antoni Ros-Marbà and Anthony Carroll Madigan introduced other symbolic characters, such as the Angelus Novus played by soprano Serena Sáenz, inspired by a painting by Paul Klee and representing "the angel of history who looks to the past to try to resolve disasters," as Ros-Marbà says.

"The opera focuses on Benjamin, but it reflects the atmosphere of that period of the rise of Nazism," Ros-Marbà recalls. Anna Ponces's stage direction is in keeping with the maestro's intentions. "There's a biographical narrative, like a biopic, which works as a flashback "since the night of the suicide in Portbou," explains Ponces, coordinator of the contemporary opera project Òh!pera del Liceu.

"We also ask ourselves what Walter Benjamin represents for us, how his thinking has affected our society. Both he and Hannah Arendt taught us to tell history from the perspective of the vanquished. They recognized themselves as refugees. Benjamin crossed the same border that the Republican refugees had crossed the other way a year earlier. And it hasn't stopped happening, people crossing borders as refugees. This is one of Benjamin's resonances in the world we live in," recalls Ponces. The first scene of the libretto speaks of "black silhouettes that represent all the people who cross borders"; and in a story with proper names, the heart of the opera represents precisely "all those who have no name." Signs, created by Playmodes Studios for the 2023 Luz BCN festival. "The main element of Signs It is a kinetic canvas of light that allows for the generation of abstract compositions that accompany the opera's text in a more suggestive than figurative way," says Santi Vilanova, of Playmodes Studios.

The Mahlerian touch

Antoni Ros-Marbà, always generous when speaking to journalists, took advantage of the press conference at the Liceu to explain some details of the composition of Benjamin in Portbou"There's a sequence before the tenor's aria in Act II that, when I was writing it, sounded a bit Mahlerian to me. There's no Mahler note, but the influence is there. And I think Peter detected it too," he says. Indeed, tenor Peter Tantsits smiles and admits he noticed it. It's not the only reference that resonates. "At the Liceu I did Wozzek [Berg's opera], in William Kentridge's production, and Benjamin in Portbou It has made me think because it is also a complete work," explains the American tenor, who highlights the dialectic between the ideas and life of Walter Benjamin. "We are almost a family, we have done a very intimate work, and even Benjamin's philosophy seems tangible thanks to this close and intimate relationship." Liceo, Benjamin in Portbou will give rise to a documentary directed by Albert Pons and produced by the La Caixa Foundation, the Liceu and 3Cat.