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In recent decades, Spanish culture has been steadily and proudly reclaiming and reconquering the myth of Carmen. Her powerful female personality has fought free of her roots in Gallicized fantasy and emerged as an autonomous character with an appeal all her own stemming from the modernity of her passions and her free decisions.
The Compañía
Sara Baras has also succumbed to the charm of this woman imagined by Mérimée and launched to operatic fame by Bizet. In this new show (a premiere at the
Gran Teatre del Liceu), Carmen escapes from Mérimée's plot and also -or nearly- from Bizet's music. The theme of tragic love, on the other hand, subsists, finding expression in images generated by the specific code of flamenco singing and dancing.
But this Carmen is something more than a tragedy turned flamenco. Liberated from the trammels of drama, the spectacle surrenders body and soul to the power of gesture and dance, to the expressive essence of flamenco and its own force of suggestion. The vigour of flamenco embraces both the actions and the words.
All the extreme, antagonistic emotions present in the immortal tragedy of Carmen become visible through a mode of expression with the capacity to convey, with the utmost passion, this matchless tale of love and disillusionment.
Direction, scenery and choreography: Sara Baras
Music:
Paco de Lucía, Joan Valent, Javier Ruibal, José Carlos Gómez,
José María Bandera, David Cerraduela, Mario Montoya, Miguel de la Tolea, Saúl Quirós.
Invited Artists:
Alicia Fernández, Raúl Fernández, Charo Pedraja, Cecilia Gómez, Ana González, María Vega, José Galán, Daniel Saltares, David Martín, David Nieto.
Conductor: Joan Valent.