"We have all been a little bit Macbeth at some point in life"

BarcelonaWith the production of Macbeth, by Verdi, Jaume Plensa was able to fulfill a dream. Plensa premiered the opera in February 2023 at the Liceu, and this Monday he returned to the theater to present an artist's book: Plensa · Macbeth · Verdi, published by Enciclopèdia Catalana, is a privileged testimony of his entire creative process, from the first sketches to the rehearsals. "It is always said that the energy must be provided by the singers to the audience, and there is never any talk of the energy that the audience gives to the singers," states the artist. "In Macbeth I tried to ensure that the audience was integrated into the production".

Plensa's Macbeth is the result of the proposal made to him by the theater's artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar. It was a commission with total freedom, a "blank check," says García de Gomar, for whom Plensa is a "visual poet of form and space." Plensa responded with a commitment to radical minimalism. "I was looking for a Macbeth where there would be no blood," recalls Plensa. "We are obsessed with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and I believe everyone is wrong: Macbeth is not extraordinary, but a man who is very much like us. We have all been a little bit of a Macbeth at some point in our lives. When he stabs the king, Macbeth realizes that he has not stabbed a man, but his own possibility of sleeping".

The book consists of two volumes of 112 and 80 pages respectively. The first contains 88 drawings by the artist using wax crayons, pencils, and gouache, reproduced at their original size. The second contains a "digital auca" (a traditional Catalan illustrated broadsheet), as the publisher, Joan Ricart, calls it. In other words, a summary of the opera with the digital illustrations that Plensa used to explain the project to his team. In addition, the book includes 18 metal silhouettes like those Plensa used for the opera's stage design. Among these silhouettes are some of his most recognizable creations, such as the monumental heads and the seated male figures representing poets; others are also seated around a tree. "I wanted everything to be flat and for the staging to be a return to the world of traditional stage design where depth is created by layering flat elements," says the artist, who invites the book's buyers to make their own "little theaters" with the silhouettes.

The scale of the book is a result of the sizes of Plensa's drawings. Before Plensa · Macbeth · Verdi, Ricart and Plensa had previously created a bibliophile edition of L'Hotel París, by the poet Vicent Andrés Estellés. The relationship worked very well. "In an artist's book, there is always a part that is innovation and another that you already know how to do, but when you work with an artist like Jaume, who has extraordinary creativity, you go a little further," says Ricart. Two editions of the book have been produced: a deluxe edition of 999 copies priced at 4,000 euros, with an exclusively designed metal case and Plensa's signature engraved with high-precision laser, and a collector's edition for 8,000 euros, limited to 99 numbered copies, with a numbered and personally signed metal case and a work numbered and signed by hand by Plensa. With this book, published in Catalan, Spanish, and English, Enciclopèdia is launching a new digital sales channel that Ricart describes as a "radical change" in the publisher's sales system.