"Look at this lectern, it's historic. It's very beautiful", says Josep Pons (Puig-reig, 1957). He is in the pit of the Liceu, the chosen space for a press conference "special and sensitive", as Víctor Garcia de Gomar, artistic director of the Rambla theatre, says. Pons is bidding farewell to the musical direction of the Gran Teatre del Liceu after fourteen years of work. The farewell is twofold. On the one hand, from the pit, with Falstaff, Verdi's opera which is performed there until July 19th; on the other hand, from the stage of the Liceu, conducting with Symphony No. 8 by Mahler on July 24th.

"It is a luxury to be able to have this farewell", says maestro Josep Pons at the press conference, who this month closes his stage as musical director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu after fourteen years of work. It is a farewell in two phases: conducting the orchestra of the Rambla theatre in the eight performances of Verdi's opera Falstaff (from July 9 to 19) and in the concert dedicated to Mahler's Symphony No. 8 'The Thousand' (July 24). "I tend to hold back my emotions", says Pons, who does admit that he feels very happy. "I believe that the job we were entrusted with, we have done. We have created a family, and we are lucky to be among good people. I am very pleased to finish at a peak moment", he assures, just after explaining that "working in an opera house is like entering a convent: it is an absolute absorption, you stop living". Happy and grateful, Pons, however, does not want the farewell to overshadow the performances of Falstaff. "Maestro Pons's last staged title, although he will have a title every year, at least", clarifies the theatre's artistic director, Víctor Garcia de Gomar, who recalls that from next season Pons will be honorary musical director of the Liceu.

The audience that will see Manon Lescaut At the Liceu, you will first encounter a video projection. Manon is an undocumented immigrant crossing a border to reach Europe. She then works in a clandestine garment workshop. With this prologue, stage director Àlex Ollé brings Giacomo Puccini's opera, premiered in 1893 and inspired by the novel, into the present day. The story of the Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut (1731), by Abbé Prévost. "It works perfectly," Ollé assured at a press conference this Wednesday. "Manon's great love is that love of someone who doesn't want to give up a better future, and that fits with our version, with an undocumented immigrant girl who enters Europe to meet her brother," he added. In the opera, Manon's brother, Sergeant Lescaut, takes her to a convent in accordance with their father's wishes. Ollé has the parents send a letter to the brother asking him to bring Manon home. Instead of returning, she embarks on the journey of love, ambition, disappointment, deception, escape, and despair that unfolds in the opera's four acts, which the stage director sets in sordid locations, such as a club where Manon works as a stripper and the cells where she awaits deportation.

Two men close out their tenure at the Liceu at the end of the 2025-2026 season. Josep Pons, which is leaving after fourteen years and with one objective clearly achieved: to first recover and then consolidate the good performances of the Liceu Symphony Orchestra. On the other hand, the resident artist of the 2020, the stage director Àlex Ollé, who in addition to promoting newly created micro-operas has premiered a magnificent production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, by Shostakovich. Pons and Ollé will be well represented in the 2025-2026 season of the Rambla theatre, which will open with The cunning fox, by Janáček, with stage direction by Barrie Kosky and musical by Pons himself. It will be the season of Lise Davidsen, the great soprano of the moment, takes on Wagner's Isolde in a new production at the Liceu directed by Bárbara Lluch. The theater will premiere another of its own productions, Figaro's Wedding, by Mozart, with stage direction by Marta Pazos.