Jaume Plensa is a man of many talents. He is an accomplished sculptor and costume designer, whose giant, thought-provoking works have graced public spaces around the world for decades. Plensa’s enormous illuminated silhouettes, huge faces, and giant bodies are both sensuous and surreal, capturing the imagination and challenging the senses.
But despite his many accomplishments, Plensa is not immune to nerves. When we met on the eve of the world premiere of his directorial debut of Macbeth at Opera Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, he was understandably anxious.
Creative types often excel at switching between arts and crafts, but Plensa says there’s no place like home, and that means added pressure to perform. However, he explains that putting Shakespeare’s play on the stage to Giuseppe Verdi’s music is a project that’s been playing quietly in his own mind for a long time.
“When I’m thinking about this production, I’m not only concerned about what’s happening on stage because in this project we have almost 80 people singing in the chorus, we have 21 dancers, we have nine soloists. It’s a big team. I’m also thinking about the 80 musicians right in front, but also the 2,242 people in the audience. That is an incredible energy,” says Plensa.
He adds that the key point of Macbeth is the moment when he realizes that he didn’t kill the body of a man, he killed the possibility to sleep. “That moment of ‘sleep no more,’ I guess, it’s probably one of the highest concepts in all the tradition, in art, in culture, in literature, in everything.”
Plensa has been working on this project for almost four years, and it’s a passion project unlike any other. William Shakespeare’s play combined with the music of Verdi have been life-long loves for Plensa, and he says that’s what makes it so special.
“My experience with Macbeth was almost always reading the book. I loved to read theater because I could imagine the face of the actors, the situation, the place where things happen. I had that book very early on in my life, and I still keep have it. I arrived to Verdi, this music, a little bit later, and I had to go deeper in the music because it was something new,” says Plensa.
For Opera Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, streaming its performances is an experiment to gain new followers, given the pandemic’s impact on funding and subsidies. The general manager, Valentà Oviedo, believes that opera is at a crossroads and has to move forward with the times.
“Opera is the lifeblood of European culture, its very DNA,” says Oviedo. “Opera spread across Europe at the same time in the 1600s, much like electronic music did in the 1980s. Now, it has to compete with new media and digital-savvy audiences.”
Plensa sees the opportunity to stream his version of Macbeth as an opportunity to build new bridges. As a designer, he’s used to working in galleries, museums, and public spaces and considers the theater a public space too.
“I’m trying to make a link between my dreams and I’m trying to create bridges, the most easy bridges to pass all the information that Shakespeare was dreaming to send to the people sitting right in front of us. And we will see,” says Plensa.
Having seen the show, I can assure you that whether you’re in the theater or watching at home, you’ll be hard-pressed not to be applauding the incredible sights and sounds. The first two acts are perhaps more for the oper
