Exploratory Operas

A community opera, created with people at risk of social exclusion and other residents of Raval.

Visit the La Gata Perduda/ The Lost Cat website

Led by El Gran Teatre del Liceu, this is the largest and most ambitious TRACTION community opera trial, with a main stage production in Barcelona’s 175-year-old opera house scheduled for October 2022. The opera focuses on the Raval neighbourhood right next to the theatre, which is characterised by social, economic and ethnic diversity. Entitled “La Gata Perduda” it is inspired by the librettist’s interviews with Raval residents. Local people are involved in the co-creation of the visual branding, costumes and other aspects of the production, while amateur choirs and music students will perform alongside professional artists.

This new project, which is part of the programme LiceuApropa, arises from the idea that art can be a vehicle for personal transformation using culture as a path towards social inclusion.

As the term “community creation” implies, the neighbourhood is closely involved in the entire creative process, from the music in the chorus to technical operations, thanks to consistent teamwork and collaboration with the professionals in each specific area. The greatest challenge is precisely this, the joining together of citizens with the professional art world, with a view to creating and producing a new opera.

What is Opera Prima Raval?

The artistic team at Liceu has been working on the creation of the new opera with local residents who will be invited to take part in a ground-breaking project. The community opera “La gata perduda” will inaugurate Liceu’s 2022/23 season in October 2022.

The leading role will be played by Raval, one of the most renowned parts of the city of Barcelona which possesses a tremendously rich social fabric, with an area of 1.1 sq. km where over 40 nationalities live side by side. It also boasts the largest number of associations per capita in the entire European Union, making it ideal for local cultural networking. In a bid to identify all potential participants in the neighbourhood, the Liceu coordinating team has been engaged in constant discussions with the Ciutat Vella district authorities and social entity Fundació Tot Raval. One of the key features of this process, which continues into the first quarter of 2022, is the search for individuals and groups who are not professionals in the world of culture, but who could take part in different aspects of the creation of an opera such as: writing the music, devising the dramaturgy, performing, and carrying out the technical operations involved in staging and publicizing the project.

Community Dialogue

The painstaking work we have done so far, making contacts and engaging in dialogue with the community has already created a network of 50 associations and organizations and identified individual participants, some of whom have already been assigned a clear role while the part to be played while others remain to be determined. All, however, will form the backbone of a collective project which will prove rewarding for everyone concerned. Among the organizations contributing to the process are Fundació Tot Raval, Conservatori del Liceu, Taller de Músics, Escola de Músics, Xamfrà, El lloc de la Dona (Dona Kolors and Dona Gospel), Escola Massana, Centre Ocupacional Sínia, Crea Dones, Estel Tàpia, Top Manta, Escola Collaso i Gil, Cor filipí Kudyapi, Androna Cultura, Associació Carabutsí, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Museu Marítim, Biblioteca del Raval, Arrels Fundació, Casal dels Infants, and many more.

Meet the professional artists

The La Gata Perduda libretto was written by dramatist Victoria Szpunberg, who found inspiration for the story in the extensive bibliographic research she carried out in the neighbourhood, focusing on interviews she held with local residents.

The plot of La Gata Perduda “revolves around an unexpected event that occurs on one of Raval’s best known streets, where a fanciful tale involving the entire neighbourhood develops”.

— Victoria Szpunberg, Librettist

Arnau Tordera, Composer

Victoria Szpunberg, Librettist

Ricard Soler Mallol, Stage Director

Alfons Reverté, Music Director

The musical score composed by Arnau Tordera draws upon the rich cultural context of the neighbourhood. The music director and conductor is Alfons Reverté, while students from the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu and the Taller de Músics will join with other musicians in performing the work. The stage director, Ricard Soler Mallol, for whom the concept of a community implies the empowerment of individuals, is casting his open, sensitive gaze on everyday life in the neighbourhood. The team of professional artists is completed by Set Designer Adrià Pinar, Costume Designer Montse Amenós, video artist Miquel Àngel Raió, lighting designers Maria de la Cámara and Gabriel Paré de Cube, and Choreographer Tuixén Benet.

Co-creation with local residents is integral to each phase of La Gata Perduda, so that artistic creation can reinforce social cohesion and showcase local talent. This artistic dialogue between artistic professionals and the community since has the potential to be transformative for everyone involved. This is precisely the project’s biggest challenge: how to achieve a suitable balance between input from the professional team and local residents, whose experience and knowledge can contribute to the production of the opera.

La Gata Perduda artistic co-creation

Between November 2020 and April 2021, several graphic design elements for La Gata Perduda, including the poster, the programme and other physical and digital materials for the promotion of the opera were co-created by artists from the Sínia Occupational Centre and students from the Massana Design School, with support from the artist Curro Claret and staff from both organizations. The two groups are very different. The Massana students are young women in their early twenties, studying for professional careers in the art and design sector. The artists at Sínia are older, include men and women, and have disabilities associated with cerebral palsy; most are wheelchair users and have speech impairments.

‘I love the idea of working with you to do something as important as making a poster for the Liceu. I am very excited about this project.’

— Sínia artist

Co-Creating the posters for La Gata Perduda

The project began when face-to-face meetings were not allowed due to COVID 19 and the vulnerability of the Sínia artists. Talks began with a video call between Sínia and Victoria Szpunberg, so that she could introduce everyone to the story and characters in the libretto. Following that session, the groups worked to develop ideas for the poster. Both institutions are situated in Raval, a few hundred metres from one another, and the artists took much pleasure in exploring the neighbourhood together with the characters and storyline of the libretto in mind. Much of their work happened online, using existing platforms and videoconferencing tools. The students took photographs of subjects and places as directed by the Sínia creatives, who then worked on them graphically, with very positive results.

Co-Creating the posters for La Gata Perduda

During the days of the performances of La Gata Perduda at Liceu in Barcelona, the co-created images will be shown on the main facade of the theatre and will feature in the opera programme. Postcard-sized versions of the posters have been printed to distribute throughout Raval. These postcards also include information about the opera in Raval’s most widely spoken languages (Catalan, Spanish, Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, Tagalog and English) as well as a QR code to the blog of La Gata Perduda.

La Gata Perduda artwork co-created by Sínia Occupational centre and Massana Design School

Co-Creating the posters for La Gata Perduda

On November 12th 2021, with the help of project volunteers, the first postcard was distributed throughout the neighbourhood in shops, pharmacies, tobacconists, cultural facilities, bakeries, butchers, supermarkets, etc. This event will be repeated in February (Friday 18th), May and September 2022.

Project participants deliver the La Gata Perduda artwork to the community

Sínia creatives testing the Co-creation Space tool in Barcelona

Co-creation Space Pilot

In December 2020 at Liceu, a pilot was conducted for Sínia creatives and students from Massana Design School to test the Co-Creation Space, a Traction social media tool being developed to allow our participants to share and communicate around mixed media during preparations for the community opera. Due to COVID 19, the production itself was delayed by a year, so a showcase of the co-creation process and work will be presented at the Liceu and locations in Raval on 19 March 2022, using the TRACTION Co-Creation Stage technology, a tool designed to link performers on different stages in multiple locations in real time.

The Raval Choirs

Students from the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu and the Taller de Músics will be primarily responsible for performing the music, under the direction of Alfons Reverté. Alongside them, many amateur musicians who live in Raval will also take part. They have varied backgrounds and experience but all will contribute to making the opera a true community production. They include 12 local choirs, large and small, who sing many different styles of music. Some choirs are all women or children, and others are made up of young or elderly people. There are Filipino community choirs and in one case, the members are women from Sub-Saharan countries, such as Nigeria.

KorraVal Evolution Choir
Kudyapi Children’s Choir
Dona Gospel Choir
Dones de Xamfrà Choir

Final decisions about the participants were made last year, and rehearsals began in January 2022, initially in small groups with larger groups rehearsing in the summer of 2022. While the main characters will be played by professional singers, one role will be played by a non-professional artist from Raval: she will receive some vocal training. There are also several choruses which will be sung by the Raval choirs. The libretto contains pieces with varying levels of difficulty so that both the professional singers and the amateurs can take part. Cristina Colomer of the Escola de Músics will help conduct the choral sequences, in cooperation with the music director Alfons Reverté.

On March 19th, 2022, Liceu professionals, the choirs of Raval and others who have taken part in the co-creation process of this community opera will comecame together for La Gata Perduda showcase, which will take place was held in the grand foyer of Liceu opera house and at various locations around Raval. The event was key not only in celebrating the work achieved so far, but also in will also serve as an opportunity to demonstrating the many different elements of the co-creation process. It also severed as an opportunity to test the Traction technological toolset and show how it has been incorporated into the co-creation process.

‘El Cabaret de la Gata’

Creating the Costumes

Costumes for the production were created by the costume designer Montse Amenós and made by two Raval NGOs –Top Manta and Dona Kolors– with the support of the Liceu costume department. The conception, design and manufacture of costumes emerged through discussions between opera house, designer and maker: if different social entities had been involved, the opera costumes would also have been different. The first concept might have originated with the professional artists, but it evolved in contact with the reactions, interests and capacities of the non-professional artists. Top Manta, a non-profit worker cooperative with close ties to the Raval, has the mission to promote a self-employment project for people who have migrated and to favour their job placement. Some of its activities are related to textile finishing, sewing and printing services. And Dona Kolors, a clothing firm that offers a job opportunity to women in contexts of prostitution and/or in situation of social exclusion.

Top Manta made the costumes for the Choir of the Raval, a big choir of more than 240 non-professional-singers. Top Manta made 780 clothing items including hoodies, T-shirts, jackets, pants, skirts and vests. Dona Kolors made the costumes for the professional opera artists in the production: the tycoon, the secretary, the architect, the healer and the detective. The T-shirts printed by Top Manta featured photographic portraits of 260 local people, made by communication students of the Blanquera communication faculty at Ramon Llull University under the supervision of the Catalan artist Jordi Guillumet.

The Stage Floor

The stage floor, a map of Raval, was imagined by the set designer Adrià Pinar and painted outdoors over 10 days by graffiti artists with supervision of Street Art Barcelona and trainees from Impulsem workshop. Street Art Barcelona is a non-profit cooperative based on social initiative located in the Raval that works to improve people’s quality of life by undertaking integrative educational, social, job and training actions. This collaborative platform of artists and curators engages in activities related to urban art such as managing and producing the Arnau Gallery project. Curator of the artistic intervention on the floor of the set made by six urban art artists linked to the Raval: Eledu, JLoca, Kenor, Morcky, Musa and Nemo. Impulsem S.C.C.L. is a non-profit cooperative based on social initiative located in the Raval that works to improve people’s quality of life by undertaking integrative educational, social, job and training actions. Some students in the painting module were the authors of the background application work and the application of the varnish on the floor of this opera’s set.

La Gata Perduda / The Lost Cat

Miniclip -Live at El Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona

5 & 7 of October 2022

El Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona

5 & 7 of October 2022

Programme:

La Gata Perduda