I highly recommend to anyone who goes to see the version of Aida signed by Shirin Neshat and that inaugurates the Liceu season, read the article "The empire in action: Aida by Verdi", by Edward W. Said, included in Culture and imperialism. Because it can help to understand the conceptual key of the show. Neshat interprets Verdi's opera based on themes such as decolonialism and feminism. And she does so with scenes without concessions to the gallery, but without discarding an undeniable poetic sense. In fact, Aida speaks to us about the abuse of theocracies, about militaristic savagery, and about the refugees who flee wars to end up in no-man's-lands. Nothing too far from the catastrophic spectacle that we from the West watch comfortably in front of the television, curled up on our sofas at home and with a remote control to change what is unbearable to our gaze. In this sense, the gaze of the Iranian Shirin Neshat is not at all compassionate, and for that reason, it can be uncomfortable.However, the problem with the show lies in the fact that the oriental artist masters the video-artistic language but not the theatrical one. And the result is excessively contrasted between some well-found performative and conceptual elements and a stereotypical and even dated stage movement of singers or—in the case of Anna Netrebko's gestures—downright ridiculous. Nor is it helped by some scenes located in the intermissions which, although personally I found them stimulating, may clash with the tradition of an opera that is the most watched and performed at the Liceu, always from a classical perspective and artificial historicism. Nevertheless, it must be said that the show is effective, risky, and of unquestionable scenic category.Aida is not a chamber opera, but it is intimate despite the most famous scenes (especially the second one of the second act), of great spectacularity. But the rest is concentrated on a story of loves and hates for which Verdi writes wise and subtle music. And it must be served with good taste and precision. And although Antonello Manacorda's direction is never messy, it does at least align well with the guidelines of the score and serves it with detail and good taste. The response of the house orchestra was up to the task, not to mention a simply capital choir, especially the male one (the scene of the temple of Vulcan is brilliant).

Josep Pons bids an operatic farewell to the Gran Teatre del Liceu (the highlight of Mahler's Eighth Symphony on Friday, July 24, still awaits) with the same title with which Verdi said goodbye to the world of theatre: Falstaff, a lyrical comedy with text by Arrigo Boito based on William Shakespeare's The Merry Wivesof Windsor by William Shakespeare. A real declaration of principles in the hands of the almost octogenarian Italian composer, who in 1893 lowered the curtain on his brilliant career at Milan's La Scala with a comedy full of sarcasm and two basic principles: 1) life is a joke and we must know how to play it and accept its punchlines; 2) we must look back to progress (“Torniamo all’antico e sarà progresso”, Verdi had written in 1871 in a letter to Francesco Florimo). Hence the final fugue with which the third and last act of Falstaff concludes, a true ethical and aesthetic manifesto against the “modernity” of the composers of the Giovane Scuola, advocating for the masters of the past, just as Wagner had done in Meistersinger.Over fourteen years, Josep Pons has worked diligently with an orchestra that has been renewed in substance and form. And which has yielded excellent results, especially in Mozart and in German, Slavic, and 20th-century titles. However, is Falstaff the most suitable work for the director from Puig-Reig? These performances have once again revealed the work on the detailism of the sections and the generous sonority. But the theatrical verve has been missed, apart from occasional imprecisions in the coordination with the singers. Nevertheless, and setting aside entirely subjective stylistic issues, it must be acknowledged that Pons does not forget the precious background (Mozartian?) of episodes like the one in Windsor Park, where the baton shone brightly given the excellent performance of the musicians in the pit, in addition to the good work of the choir.In the second cast of the two scheduled for the end of the Liceu season, Ambrogio Maestri's indisputable authority has once again provided a lesson with a textbook Falstaff from the Italian singer-actor: he knows it all and knows how to bring water to his mill when his vocal conditions are no longer what they were ten or fifteen years ago (Maestri sang this title at the Liceu in 2010). Maestro Maestri masters the character, whom he humanizes with great theatrical intuition and musical wisdom. A lesson in style, in short.

With Le nozze di Figaro (1786), the poet Lorenzo Da Ponte began his collaboration with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which would continue with two more operas: Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790). And it must be said that the first of the three operas is the most perfect in terms of theatrical machinery. It is logical, therefore, that Marta Pazos has enthusiastically embraced the proposal made by the Liceu. Three weeks before her debut at the Grec Theatre with The Threepenny Opera (Dreigroschenoper), the Galician director has culminated a work processed through slow cooking in terms of ideas and the overall design of the show.Pazos has based the dramaturgical concept of this Nozze di Figaro on the famous article Notes on Camp, which Susan Sontag published in 1964. The North American writer states, among other things: "The camp sensibility is one that is open to a double meaning in which things can be taken. But it is not about the familiar dichotomous construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is, rather, the difference between the thing as it means something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice." This passage is, I think, the keystone of Pazos's idea when approaching Mozart's opera. The aesthetic category of camp, markedly baroque and postmodern, permeates the show with good ideas, some close to the universe of Barrie Kosky and with occasional choreographic touches that are only partially effective. The giant cake that presides over the stage designed by Max Glaenzel – based on an idea by Pazos herself – is complemented by Agustín Petronio's costumes, markedly and deliberately grotesque, and to which, I think, the reference to packaging associated with culinary products that we all consume is superfluous. And Pazos explains the opera's story well, although he leaves a more precise portrait of the characters in the inkwell. Nevertheless, the production was liked and received more ovations than protests.

Manon Lescaut It always works if this opera is presented in a production that perfectly captures its essence: an apotheosis of melodrama, like virtually the entirety of Puccini's catalog. In the last twenty years, the Liceu has presented three different productions of Puccini's third opera, based on the novel The History of the Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut of theabbot Prévost. A story also inspired by the operas of Auber, Massenet, and Henze. Now, Puccini's version has returned to the Rambla. A production of the Frankfurt Opera, with stage direction by Àlex Ollé and part of his usual team: set designer Alfons Flores, costume designer Lluc Castells and lighting designer Joachim Klein.

Amilcare Ponchielli's most famous opera is hardly defensible. Leaving aside the intensity of some arias, The Mona Lisa It lacks the dramatic appeal necessary for a staging that transcends the most blatant historicism. Arrigo Boito's pretentious libretto, disguised under the pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio, offers nothing more.

It was on everyone's lips that the Catalonia Opera Foundation It made history by adding its first Wagner to its extensive list of programmed titles, spanning more than forty years. And, although Der fliegende Holländer It draws heavily on German Romanticism of the first third of the 19th century, and the Nibelungs are still a distant memory. Wagner always demands an extra artistic effort, which in this case he hasn't quite achieved. It's not that this spectacle has foundered, but sadly it hasn't reached its full potential, if we may use the nautical metaphors that precede the fourth opera in Wagner's catalogue.