The alliance between different institutions and schools will result in the creation and premiere of four small-format operas that will be performed during the same evening in different spaces of the Liceu on July 9 and 10, 2022, a great showcase to showcase emerging talent of the city and project it internationally. Àlex Ollé, artist-in-residence at the Gran Teatre, leads the artistic direction of the project. Composers Marc Migó, José Río-Pareja, Núria Giménez-Comas and Fabià Santcovsky are in charge of devising these high-energy operas, lasting about 30 minutes, dealing with current subjects. The composers and composers were selected within the Barcelona Sound Creation project of the ICUB.

The Gran Teatre del Liceu has presented the (Óh!)pera project, an initiative promoted by the Department of Tourism and Creative Industries of the Barcelona City Council, Disseny Hub Barcelona and the main design schools in the city. The artistic direction of the project will be led by Àlex Ollé, resident artist at the Gran Teatre del Liceu.

The objective of the (ÒH!)PERA project is to complement the training of young people in creative disciplines in the city of Barcelona and facilitate their learning in a real environment, thus having an experience with the operatic genre and its professionals. The mission of this initiative includes the accompaniment and support in artistic creation, making available spaces and resources that serve as a field of experimentation based on the rigor, demand and quality of the projects.

The project includes the creation of four small-format operas to be performed during the same evening in different spaces of the Liceu (Sala Miralls, Teatrí del Conservatori and Foyer), on July 9 and 10, 2022. This collaboration and alliance project between institutions and academia wants to be a showcase to show the emerging talent of the city and project it internationally.

The Liceu has selected the composers Núria Giménez-Comas, Marc Migó, José Río-Pareja and Fabià Santcovsky to devise high-energy operas, about 30 minutes long, dealing with current subjects. The chosen names are a significant representation of the current authors who work with written music. It is a snapshot of the current moment of the city in the field of composition, a very rich and diverse moment, with new generations formed in a renewed cultural and historical context and inserted in the global environment, a fact that affects the musical aesthetics of the artists, as well as the impact and positioning of the new musical creation in Barcelona. The composers were selected within the Barcelona Sound Creation project of the ICUB with the aim that these creators approach opera, giving them their first opportunity in the genre and betting on the premiere of new repertoires in large musical institutions in the city.

The particularity of the commission is the fact that there is a maximum of 6 artists on stage, including singers and instrumentalists, who will collaborate on the project thanks to the support of the Fundació Ferrer Salat – Fundació Conservatori Liceu.

For the staging, diversity of aesthetic proposals will be sought and each micro-opera will have one of the following professionals in the field of stage direction: Nao Albet, Alícia Serrat, Marc Chornet and Silvia Delagneau.

Design students from different educational centers in the field of creative industries will participate in the project. The schools, which have been selected by the Design Promotion Department of the Barcelona City Council, are: BAU, ELISAVA, EINA, LCI and Escola Massana. The collaboration will materialize with the participation of four schools in the creation of the staging of the four micro-operas. Teams of undergraduate and master’s students from the different design disciplines will be created to work on aspects such as the design of the scenic space, costumes, lighting and audiovisual design. A fifth school will design the project’s image, communication and marketing.

(ÒH!) PERA is one of the projects framed in the strategies of the Government Measure to Promote Creative Industries. One of its priority lines is the promotion of talent. With this objective, since 2019, several projects have been launched with Barcelona’s art and design degree schools that have linked students with the business fabric of the creative industries and other sectors of the economy. Initiatives that seek to bring final year students from design schools closer to a practice with city objectives.

In 2022, Disseny Hub Barcelona continues promoting these projects, among which the Barcelona Fashion Forward stands out, which wants to promote and accompany emerging fashion designers and brands in their professionalization; the Sustainable Challenge that seeks to provide solutions in favor of the sustainability of the fashion industry; Dissenyem comerç that unites training centers and commercial hubs in Barcelona to draw up proposals for reactivating local commerce in neighbourhoods; or the three new pop-up exhibition spaces at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, ​​where projects from design schools will have a great weight.