The madrileño venue has announced its new season, which will present a journey through more than five centuries of performing and lyrical art. The theater will premiere 10 new titles, including Parténope, by Georg Friedrich Händel, The Angel of Fire, by Sergéi Prokofiev and a new production of Joan of Arc at the stake, by Arthur Honegger. In addition, with this new program, the Teatro Real commemorates its 100th season.

 

Still in the midst of the social upheaval and the economic consequences caused by the pandemic, the 25th season of the Teatro Real after its reopening, is presented in a more hopeful context, vindicating the gradual return to normality.

 

It is an ambitious and eclectic program spanning five centuries, which incorporates 10 new titles to the lyrical repertoire that the Teatro Real has been creating throughout its history and which will reach its 100th season this year.

 

In addition to all the parallel activities inside and outside the Theater, its offer of courses, workshops and projects with educational centers, the 2021-2022 Season, with a great variety of periods and styles, is made up of 16 opera titles, 3 programs of dance, 9 concerts plus the 6 that make up Chamber Sundays; 8 productions for children and adolescents framed in El Real Junior in addition to the 9 children’s workshops Everyone a la Gayarre !; and 5 screenings of Real productions within the Opera en Cine cycle.

 

 

 

THE OPERA

 

The Opera program includes the absolute premiere of Luis de Pablo’s opera, El abrecartas, based on the homonymous novel by Vicente Molina Foix, librettist, once again, by the composer; and the premiere of the stage version of the chamber opera Las horas vacías, by Ricardo Llorca.

 

 

Along with popular titles from the lyrical repertoire, such as The Wedding of Figaro, La Cenerentola, Nabucco, The Sunset of the Gods, Lakmé or La bohème, little-known works of the English Baroque will be offered such as Parténope, by Georg Friedrich Händel (premiere in Spain) and King Arthur, by Henry Purcell, and 3 rarely performed 20th century works: Joan of Arc at the stake, by Arthur Honegger, The Angel of Fire, by Sergéi Prokófiev (premiere in Spain) and Siberia, by Umberto Giordano.

 

 

Five interesting dramaturgical proposals show the syncretism of the opera program: the staging of the oratory Joan of Arc at the stake, by Arthur Honegger, and the cantata La damoiselle élue, by Claude Debussy; the world premiere of Extinción, a production conceived from two masses by the Spanish baroque composer Joan Cererols; the miscellany of opera and dance fragments from the 17th century entitled The Birth of the Sun King; or the hybrid proposal of the musician Rufus Wainwright, Hadrian, ‘belcantismo pop’ with photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

 

 

The titles that make up the opera program offer a wide range of musical styles, ranging from the seventeenth century to the present.

 

 

DANCE AND CONCERTS

 

The dance program will bring to the Teatro Real 3 companies that represent different choreographic universes. The National Ballet of Spain will celebrate on our stage the Centennial of Antonio Ruiz Soler, ‘Antonio el Bailarín’, with a program composed of choreographies by this mythical figure of Spanish dance along with others by Rubén Olmo, current director of the BNE, and Carlos Vilán. Acosta Danza, a company founded by the great name of classical dance, Carlos Acosta, will pay tribute to his native Cuba through the gaze of some of the most relevant choreographers of the moment, including Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Russell Maliphant, among others.

 

The season finale will be put on by the Bolshoi Ballet, which returns to the Royal Theater with one of the most emblematic titles of classical dance, La bayadera, in Yuri Grigorovich’s version of Marius Petipá’s original.

 

This season’s “Voces del Real” cycle is made up of 6 concerts featuring some of the best lyrical artists in the world: Juan Diego Flórez, Ana Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazof, Lise Davidsen and Leif Ove Andsnes (piano), Lisette Oropesa, Jakub Józef Orlinski and Bejun Metha.

 

The Concerts offer is completed by the 6 that make up the “Chamber Sundays” cycle, and 3 other interesting proposals. Under the title Rossini and Spain. Isabel Colbrán, the muse, the soprano Olga Syniakova and the conductor Lucía Marín, who lead the Titular Orchestra of the Teatro Real, will perform at the Fundación Juan March.

 

The pianist Lang Lang will be the star of the Concert of the Fundación Amigos del Teatro Real and, once again, the Teatro Real will host the Concert of the Tenor Viñas Contest, in which the winners of the 59th edition of the contest will take part, together with the Orchestra Head of the Teatro Real under the direction of Daniel Montané.