If wise is a person with deep and extensive knowledge about the topics they speak or write about, there is no doubt that Xavier Albertí is a wise man of theater and music. Who was director of the Grec Festival (1996-1999) and the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (2013-2021), colleague of Lluïsa Cunillé in the company La Reina de la Nit and director of small theater gems on texts by Harold Pinter, Thomas Bernhard, Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, until now had only flirted with acting, almost always in front of a piano, or cross-dressed as the Polish director Wanda Pitrowska for the premiere of L’aplec del Remei, by Josep Anselm Clavé in 2016 at the TNC, but had never achieved such prominence as in this Beethoven with a clear enough title.

A little over thirty years have passed since the powerful, caustic and tense proposal that Ariel Garcia Valdès directed of The crown of thorns at the Romea Theatre on December 22, 1994. Many years for a work that, without being one of Josep Maria de Sagarra's best known, is undoubtedly one of his most profound and tragic, and which confirms the linguistic, poetic and dramatic quality of this dramatic poem written in 1930 and which now, in the TNC's standing audience.

The seemingly most boring lives can hide small and large dramas. The protagonist of this dark tale by Lluïsa Cunillé is a gray man with a gray life. Despite being widely read, he has had little choice. And it's not that he didn't have youthful dreams; quite the contrary, he wanted to travel and see the world. One day, he even thought he'd like to join the circus of his future wife, the daughter of an elephant tamer. But the world that passed him by was that of his father's kiosk next to a convention center, where he had no choice but to work.