ESTÈTICA I MASSACRE

WHAT WE ARE AND WHAT WE PROJECT

The Perelada Festival presents Aesthetics and Massacre, a contemporary opera created within the framework of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Òh!pera project. A production that forms part of a new generation of operatic creation, it connects with the Festival's tradition as a space open to new creation, attentive to emerging voices and the languages of the present. In this context, the collaboration with the Liceu reinforces a shared commitment to contemporary creation, joining efforts to bring projects to life that might otherwise remain ephemeral.
Conceived as a tragicomedy for two characters - a soprano and a baritone -, the work explores the relationship between identity and representation in the digital age. The need to build an image, sustain it, and adapt it to the codes of social recognition becomes the dramatic core: a space of tension between what we are and what we project.
Carles Prat's music articulates this conflict through a composition that both accompanies and questions the action. Based on materials that evoke certain aesthetic codes - often associated with roles and conventions - the score evolves towards a more unstable territory, where textures overlap, blur and collide. The result is not so much an illustration of the text as an active device that generates tension within the narrative and pushes its boundaries.
With a libretto by Carlota Gurt, one of today's most unique literary voices, and stage direction by Oriol Pla, a theatre creator and performer who has recently expanded his reach with an International Emmy for acting. The production is conceived as a collective work where the visuals - set design, lighting, costumes, and projections - play a key role. The stage space does not accompany the action: it shapes it, distorts it and multiplies it, in harmony with a drama that oscillates between recognition and strangeness.
Performed by Maria Patak and Carlos Varela, with a small instrumental ensemble conducted by the composer himself, Aesthetics and Massacre is presented as a chamber opera which, while drawing on similar formats, forcefully questions contemporary mechanisms of identity construction.
A production that understands opera as a space for creation and risk, and that aligns with the Festival's commitment to embracing new perspectives and making the stage a place for thought and experimentation.