Barcelona

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What's new in arts and culture?

The last few years have been kind to Barcelona’s culture vultures. The vibrancy of Catalan theatre, less dependent on plot or dialogue than on a festive blend of music, choreography, multimedia sleight-of-hand and slick production values, added to the local love for light-hearted mega-productions, has sparked a spectacular growth in attendances in recent years. With television actors serving as theatre box-office draws these days, more and more venues are dedicated to unabashed money-making, with musical comedy at the forefront, but the trickle-down effect is to make people comfortable with the idea of a night out at the theatre.

Classical music has been given a boost of a different kind, with a veritable rash of new concert halls, the latest of which will be a new, 700-seater Sala de Cambra due to open in autumn 2007 in L’Auditori. A couple of years ago the Palau de la Música Catalana unveiled its new, acoustically excellent, subterranean 500-seater auditorium, while, previous to that, the phoenix-like Liceu opera house spread its wings, Rafael Moneo’s stark L’Auditori provided the city with a bleeding-edge concert hall and the Auditori Winterthur became a small, charming outpost in the otherwise soulless business and university district. These venue changes have been supplemented by a subtle switch in repertoire. The canon still reigns, of course. But as a younger generation of cultural programmers takes charge, newer work has found an audience. You no longer have to be dead to get your music heard.

 

Key players
The last few years have seen the deaths of two leading Catalan composers – Joaquim Homs and Xavier Montsalvatge – leaving Joan Guinjoan as Catalonia’s most important living composer. Another local, manic genius Carles Santos, composes, directs and performs in surreal operatic-theatrical performances that combine sex, psychology and sopranos. Now in his sixties, he still manages to average a new show a year. Key Catalan theatre players making waves internationally include La Fura dels Baus, Els Comediants and Tricicle, while Dagoll Dagom creates huge money-spinning musicals. And don’t forget ever-controversial Calixto Bieito: renowned for his wildly polemical interpretations of Hamlet and Don Giovanni, he’s directed classics at the Edinburgh Festival and worked at the English National Opera.

 

Dance moves
Barcelona has many thriving contemporary dance companies, but there are few major dance venues and most companies spend their time touring. Performers such as Pina Bausch and the Compañía Nacional de Danza (directed by the revered Nacho Duato) have played to sell-out crowds in the Teatre Nacional and the Liceu, while the Teatre Nacional has a resident company led by Marta Carrasco and the Teatre Lliure (Plaça Margarida Xirgú, Montjuïc, 93 289 27 70, www.teatrelliure.com) hosts new work. However, it’s difficult for companies to find big audiences. Innovative companies such as Sol Picó and Mar Gómez usually run a new show every year, as do influential companies such as Metros, Mudances and Gelabert-Azzopardi.

 

Festivals
The Festival del Grec, which takes place from June to August, is the mother of all Barcelona festivals, calling in impressive musicians, dance troupes and actors from all over the world; its open-air venues are magical on a summer night. The Marató de l’Espectacle is in June, with a fun but exhausting two nights of non-stop micro performances. Dies de Dansa offers three days of national and international dance in June and July, in sites such as the Port, the CCCB or the MACBA. Several music festivals are staged, the foremost of which are the Festival de Música Antiga and the Nous Sons festival of contemporary music, both in spring. In summer, the focus moves. Various museums hold small outdoor concerts, and there are weekly events in several city parks, particularly as part of July’s Clàssics als Parcs season.

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