Otras justas hay en Barcelona... La voz de los autores, la crítica y el público ante el estreno de "D.Q." / There are other jousts in Barcelona... The voice of the authors, critics and the public to the premiere of "D.Q."

By Enrique Encabo Fernández

(Lecture published in the second volume of "Visions of Don Quixote in twentieth-century music". Ministry for Science & Innovation; Cervantes Studies Center (Ed. Begoña Lolo). Madrid, 2010)


Risk is implicit in creation,
even to the point of paradox.
José Luis Turina

The operatic event far exceeds the mere musical product: starting from the progressive divorce between creation and the public, accentuated during the 20th century, agents such as critics shape the sonic event, forming a fundamental part of the reception process of a lyrical work. This is even more evident when it comes to a new creation or reinterpretation of a classic work. The literature that emerged from the premiere of D.Q. at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona during the 2000/2001 season is proof of this phenomenon.
Conceptually, we can consider the gestation of D.Q. as a Wagnerian product. This is because its composer, José Luis Turina, repeatedly emphasizes the need for literary and sonic creation to go hand in hand, feeding off each other like communicating vessels. The force of synergies thus acts on literary (Justo Navarro), dramaturgical (La Fura dels Baus), and musical (José Luis Turina) creation. Moreover, the need to explain oneself through writings is an inherent fact of Wagnerian works, often serving as their legitimation by the Bayreuth mastermind. Criticism as an accident, a text by Turina that appeared on the occasion of the premiere (1), once again serves as a point of connection between the romantic work and the recent creation (2).
The title of Turina's text is sufficiently eloquent regarding its content. For the composer, his Don Quixote was not understood; indeed, the interpretative category of "understanding" as an aesthetic criterion (beyond taste or delight) is a much-repeated idea in the battles between criticism and authors fought in more recent productions. It suffices to mention the case of artistic director Calixto Bieito, who in his operatic reinterpretations combines "the original force" present in the works with the political or social contemporaneity of the society to which they are presented. In response to the attacks made on his "daring" proposals, the creators' response usually lies in the realm of gnosis, knowledge, interpretation, and understanding (3). Thus, an act of appreciating the artistic work is appealed to, directed more at rationality than sentiment.
Why is there this difficulty of understanding around D.Q.? Regardless of the risky staging or theme, a triple parody resulting from choosing Cervantes' novel merely as a pretext, the main novelty, highlighted by all who have written about the work, is already reflected in its authorship: the work is based on an initial idea by the theater group La Fura dels Baus. As a double consequence of this genesis, we have a predominance of plastic forms as the expressive material of the opera and, on the other hand, according to Turina's own words, an "eminently scenic spectacle [...] in which the music helps to understand and follow the action, which is very agile and complicated" (4). Therefore, the musical conception of the spectacle stems from the Don Quixote/La Fura binomial, or, in other words, Tradition/Avant-garde. Thus, on the occasion of the premiere, the composer expressed his intention to reflect "the constant confrontation between the future and the past, which transcends from the libretto to the music, through the use of contemporary with the traditional." This confrontation translates into the use of languages from different stylistic periods within the same work, forcing the aesthetic contradictions that this entails: "In a way, what I seek is a magical balance between structuralism and expressiveness, between the rational and the emotional, and I outright reject any aesthetic imposition that tries to nullify this last component in today's art" (5).
It is curious that the reviews of the premiere concentrated their negative criticism on the libretto and staging. The music, perhaps because at certain moments it is situated in a sound universe closer to traditional than avant-garde compositions (6), was not attacked and, in certain cases, received commendatory comments. However, the libretto was accused of being incoherent and imperfect. To understand these attacks, we may need to look back at the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha and the various readings of Cervantes' work carried out throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Considering the horizon of expectations that criticism could have towards the opera, we can think that many of the reproaches to the libretto were made precisely for not finding the Cervantine figure in it. Because the D.Q. of La Fura, Navarro, and Turina is not an adaptation of the episode narrated by Cervantes about Don Quixote's visit to the City of Counts. Through the mechanism of triple parody, the story of Don Quixote is not rewritten, but a new work is illuminated, in which the events narrated in the novel are a basis, an excuse to construct a futuristic journey in which Don Quixote departs from Geneva and visits Hong Kong before landing on the Barcelona Ramblas in 2005, the 4th Centenary of the appearance of the first copy of Cervantes' genuine work.
Our intention is not to account for all the literature that emerged around the spectacle but to highlight some of the aesthetic criteria with which the work was judged. In this sense, we can highlight two aspects: the supremacy of the attention paid to the staging and, in consonance with this, the "spectacularity" of the work. Begoña Lolo wondered in 2005, regarding D.Q., if with the spectacularity of the scenic means, the music had taken second place (7). This, which may be more or less true regarding the reception by the public, seems an evident truth when approaching the criticism made around D.Q. The expectations around La Fura, the plot, or novelty as an end in itself, caused an apparent neglect of the music when reviewing the premiere.
Regarding the supremacy of the set design, one name stands out above the other two authors of the production, La Fura dels Baus: "La Fura dels Baus is a radical theatre group best known for physical, often violent performances making creative use of flame-throwers, chainsaws, canned sardines, and enforced audience participation" (8). This is how Paul Richardson introduced this "modern Diaghilev", as Josep Pons defines them (9), who was in charge of the set design for D.Q., from London.
An opera "by and for" La Fura, as Jesús Ruiz Mantilla rightly points out in El País when reviewing the theater group's approaches to the lyric genre (10), D.Q. was born marked by the anticipation surrounding the supposedly risky proposal of the Catalan group. This anticipation was not accidental but provoked. If in the audience's imagination there is a certain concept of the spectacle associated with the theater group, this horizon of expectations is enriched by prior reviews of the show. An example is the one carried out by Ana María Dávila in El Mundo, who, under the significant title "La Fura accepts the Liceo's censorship in the work Don Quixote", focuses on those moments suppressed for the premiere. The sequence "La Fura-Liceo-censorship" feeds the curiosity about transgression in the temple of good taste (11); despite the spectacular title, the "suppressed" moments, censored for the journalist, correspond to the burning of two flags, the Spanish and the Catalan, in the third act, and the appearance in the hall of a fine rain intended to "sprinkle the audience". These types of comments heated the atmosphere in a direction that had nothing to do with what was going to be seen. For Turina, "even the critics, who are supposed to be objective, took the bait: they thought they were going to see the typical Fura show, violent, noisy and aggressive, and they found themselves with an eminently plastic, poetic, and reflective proposal" (12). Perhaps this expectation was also due to comments from Justo Navarro, who emphasized that La Fura wanted to "contaminate the opera", but praised this "contaminating aesthetic", and from Carles Padrissa, reaffirming that "we wanted to bring the opera as a genre closer to our own language" (13); the discrepancy between the work and "what was expected to be seen," that is, this supposed "language of La Fura", led some to accuse La Fura of squandering the 150 million budget they had.
Futuristic, complicated, risky… are some of the adjectives added to the work on the occasion of the premiere. Regarding the prominence of La Fura dels Baus, the second aesthetic criterion used by the critics to judge the work develops: its spectacularity. An example is the review by Lourdes Morgades in El País, significantly titled "Spectacularity and boredom at the premiere of Don Quixote by La Fura." The journalist reviews the most striking aspects of the set design to finally conclude that the opera was boring (14), but, does an opera have to be "entertaining"? The criterion of entertainment or amusement does not seem to preside over most artistic judgments of artistic creations in the last century. Art, in this case, music, loses its mimetic or playful function at least as the ultimate goal, and under this perspective, few contemporary creations would be spared from criticism. But by prioritizing the scenic factor over others, the critique commits another paradox by establishing categories: it seems that the presence of La Fura prevents the press from listening to Turina's music, even though this is precisely the critique that is made. It is true that in all the reviews that appeared, the musical part is the most favored, but this is so, almost by omission: vague references to the combination of a tonal language combined with other sonorities, without highlighting the dramatic force arising from the impossible combination of opposites, and barely any mention of musical citations, even though references to tradition can be recognized in key moments of the dramatic action, either formally, through the use of arias, or explicitly, such as the musical citation of Parsifal or El Retablo de Maese Pedro (15), or in more experimental compositional procedures, such as the inclusion of electronic parts collectively composed by "cyber composers"; all that should have "saved" the opera for the critics, the musical part, is omitted, highlighting only the scenic aspects. A traditional concept of the spectacle is sought by alluding to its most avant-garde aspects, the result seems inevitable (16).
It is evident, in light of what has been written, that the critics' verdict was one of failure. And, despite this, it is significant the large number of writings that appeared around the premiere, and even afterward, of the La Fura, Navarro, and Turina show when compared with other contemporary premieres and even with Halffter's Don Quixote, with which it is difficult not to draw parallels due to their themes and contemporary premieres (17). Simplifying the matter, we could say that more is written about D.Q., but not in a truly analytical manner. An example is Yvan Nommick's article on the presence of Don Quixote in the opera, in which, while Halffter's opera receives a detailed treatment regarding its genesis and intertextuality, D.Q. only highlights the role of Miralles and La Fura's set design (18). Therefore, in light of the treatment received, the voice of the criticism, both journalistic and musicological, seems unanimous. What happened with the public?
Talking about the voice of the public, even considering the idea of the public as a homogeneous mass with a single thought, has a testimonial character in this text. It is practically impossible to specify the public's opinion regarding the premiere of D.Q., largely because critics are not fond of criticizing the public beyond clearly subjective comments about whether the work "was liked" or not. The full house achieved during the nine performances that opened the 2000/2001 Liceo season, a box office success that surprised the company, does not seem to be an indicator either, in view of the comments that excited the expectations around the work. Perhaps we will never know if the hall was filled with opera "enjoyers", in Derrida's reflection (19), imbued with snobbish clichés, or a public interested in new artistic proposals. In any case, it is clear that those who went to see an opera might have felt disappointed. Because, despite the framework in which it was offered and despite the terminology used by the press and the authors themselves (20), D.Q. is not an opera. Undoubtedly, the problematization carried out around the genre by authors like Alastair Fowler and Jacques Derrida (21) can clarify the situation of this artistic product concerning the conception of an opera. Multimedia show, audiovisual production, experiment... (22), D.Q. participates in many of the conventions of the lyric genre but ceases to belong to it, in a hermetic sense, as its proposal far exceeds the genre's canons. Forgetting the operatic label, many of the aesthetic categories with which the proposal was judged become invalid: the "deliberate assault" on the "Temple of good taste," because this way, the audition framework, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, ceases to define the work; the preeminence of music over the set design, since this, which seems valid for opera (23), is not considered in other artistic proposals; the risk implicit in creation, because, would we accept an artistic proposal in other fields devoid of "risk"? Regarding the risk in the "novelty" of proposals, it is not strange to notice that the public does not face arts like literature or cinema in the same way, where novel and risky proposals are enthusiastically received, as they do with opera as a conventional spectacle; in the latter, the public refuses to make an effort before music that they assume uncomfortable beforehand (24).
In conclusion, we can deduce that in D.Q., the middle path between tradition and avant-garde is not fully understood, despite being one of the a priori assumptions of postmodernity (25). Thus, regarding the premiere, we have seen that while some critics considered the music to be too modern, others noted the most remarkable aspects as the moments of tonal melodic inspiration. In any case, the simultaneous appearance of the two musical styles was not noted, an aspect that constitutes the genesis of the musical discourse for its author. This leads us to question what aesthetic criteria each of the involved agents used to interpret the work. It seems evident that, for the author, in this case, Turina, the approach had to be from a rational point of view, appealing to a Kantian aesthetic in which the difficult, the mystery to be unraveled, produces aesthetic enjoyment. For the critics, the predominant aesthetic criterion was one that aimed at immediate enjoyment, the sensory realm. This is inferred from the adjective "boring" used pejoratively to define the show. The paradox is implicit in the very aesthetics of postmodernity: starting from a position in the realm of transgression, it seems to appeal to the criterion of "originality" as the key to interpreting its proposals. And yet, originality linked to the idea of the author, of genius, is clearly a modern criterion, that is, romantic or post-romantic. Can one be original today? Is this the aspiration of the work of art? Upon re-reading the reviews of the work, this seems to be the dominant idea: transgressive, risky, are the words repeated over and over again in the texts. The present idea is clear: novelty. Every work aims to be new in some sense, but the key lies in what the novelty of a proposal is. The violent juxtaposition of tonal and atonal language, the timbral innovation in which the traditional elements of the orchestra coexist with electroacoustic music, the use of passages composed by internet users, provoke a new artistic proposal, not as isolated elements, but as a sum of the parts.
Therefore, success or failure? It is practically impossible to speak in absolute terms. From the field of authorship, José Luis Turina himself, in 2001, reflected his inability to affirm the success or failure of the proposal (26); for La Fura dels Baus it represented a turning point in their operatic reinterpretations (27); for the company, in the words of Joan Matabosch, it would be very unfair not to consider it a success.
As we have seen, the words of the critics, attached to traditionalist criteria to judge a new creation, do not shed much light on the matter either. The only objective indicator seems to be the subsequent impact of the work. And even in this regard, the response is not unequivocal: D.Q. has not been performed again, at least not in its entirety as a stage show, and therefore, we might believe in the failure of the initiative conceived for the 2000/2001 season (28). However, the work was released on DVD (29), in a format that exceeded the simple recording of the performance, constituting a singular and high-quality audiovisual material, allowing through it to appreciate nuances that, due to the architectural characteristics of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, were incomprehensible in the live performance. Could it be that at the dawn of the 21st century, new avenues for the dissemination of opera have been opened? The preeminence of audiovisual media in our society exceeds the theater framework and conditions the viewer's gaze. Is it the avant-garde, the multimedia, that assaults the traditional operatic realm? Or is it the opera, with all its variants, a genre of long tradition, that repeatedly reformulates itself, claiming its place in the multimedia universe? (30)


NOTES

(1) TURINA, José Luis. "Criticism as an Accident: Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again". In: Doce notas preliminares, no. 6 (2000), pp.120-136.
(2) In this text, when referring to the author’s voice, we primarily consider the composer José Luis Turina, as he has been the one who has most thoroughly attempted to explain the genesis and concept of this opera, not only in the already cited article but also in more recent ones such as "D.Q. (Don Quixote in Barcelona)", where the composer defends his right to express himself in writing. See TURINA, José Luis. "D.Q. (Don Quixote in Barcelona)" . In: Cervantes y el Quijote en la música. Estudios sobre la recepción de un mito. Begoña Lolo (ed.). Madrid: Centro de estudios cervantinos - MEC, 2007, pp. 699-708. For reasons of space, we briefly cite the equally interesting critical contributions of Justo Navarro and La Fura dels Baus.
(3) See ENCABO, Enrique. "The Challenge of Operatic Reinterpretation: Versions and Subversions in the Work of Calixto Bieito". In: Revista de Musicología, Vol. 29th, no. 1 (2006), pp. 59-74.
(4) This double consequence was highlighted by one of the most accurate reviews of the work, carried out by PLÁ, Ramón. "Postscript for D.Q. ". In: La Vanguardia, 14-X-2000, p. 12. Regarding the relevance of the scenic, it is worth recalling Montsalvatge's 1975 reflection on the importance of the theatrical factor, almost superior to that of music. See MONTSALVATGE, Xavier. "The Composer Before the Opera". In: La opera en España: su problemática. 7th Decena de música en Toledo, Madrid: M.E.C. 1975.
(5) Data collected in an interview with the composer at the time of the premiere.
(6) Although the novelty precisely resided in this synchronous presentation of different languages. José Luis Turina himself highlighted: "if I had made music of ultra-avant-garde tendencies for D.Q. I would not have taken any risk at all: it would have gone unnoticed, ue to the saturation we have reached […]. The risk was very high, because there are many enthusiasts willing to tear their clothes at a consonant chord, as there are those willing to tear them at any novelty, however peaceful it may be". In this text, we omit the criticisms referring to the "Spanishness" or "Catalanity" of the genesis of the work as contradictory: it is enough to highlight the opinion of Vela del Campo, who insinuates the peculiarities of the Barcelona public regarding what comes from Madrid, alluding to those enthusiasts who believed that a "opera" by La Fura should be set to music by a Catalan composer. See VELA DEL CAMPO, Juan Angel. "Don Quixote from Other Artistic Realms". In: Cervantes y el Quijote en la música. Estudios sobre la recepción de un mito. Begoña Lolo (ed.). Madrid: Centro de estudios cervantinos-MEC, 2007, p. 736.
(7) VELA DEL CAMPO, J. A. "Don Quixote from Other Artistic Realms", p. 732.
(8) RICHARDSON, Paul. "La Fura dels Baus turns its hand to opera". In: The Independent. 10-X-2000.
(9) MORGADES, Lourdes. "Don Quixote Travels to the Future at the Liceo". In: El País, 24-IX-2000.
(10) RUIZ MANTILLA, Jesús. "The Most Profane Fura". In: El País, 4-VIII-2009.
(11) DÁVILA, Ana María. "La Fura Accepts Censorship of the Liceo in Don Quixote". In: El Mundo, 29-IX-2000. In this sense, Paul Richardson also expresses himself: "When the troupe was hired by the Gran Teatre del Liceu, a symbol of traditional excellence in Catalan musical life, Barcelona could hardly believe its ears". An idea associated with the theater that is far from reality: the Catalan coliseum (and not only this one) has combined the most daring proposals with the traditional presentation of the usual repertoire since its reopening. Therefore, we find in the criticism inherited ideas about opera as a genre that have little or nothing to do with reality today, but rather with an ignorance that provokes the interpretation of the operatic genre around nineteenth-century criteria.
(12) Interview with the composer.
(13) MORGADES, L. "Don Quixote Travels to the Future at the Liceo".
(14) MORGADES, Lourdes. "Spectacularity and Boredom at the Premiere of Don Quixote by La Fura". In: El País, 1-X-2000.
(15) Aspects highlighted time and again by the composer. See TURINA, J. L. "D.Q. (Don Quixote in Barcelona)", p. 706.
(16) This "deafness" of the criticism can be evidenced by the fact that Lourdes Morgades (in her article of October 1, 2000) only saved the third act, while the composer believed that some points of the third act needed a review. It is also evident in the paradox that for some the music was "hyper-intellectualized" and for others, it was "ultra-conservative".
(17) Examples include: FERNáNDEZ GUERRA, Jorge. "José Luis Turina: D.Q. would not exist without commission". In: ABC Cultural, 30-IX-2000, p. 41; "D.Q. The Total Opera". In: Magazine. Sunday supplement of the newspaper El Mundo, 1-X-2000, pp. 24-25, MELEacute;NDEZ-HADDAD, Pablo. "Don Quixote, Return to the Future". In: ABC Cultural, 30-IX-2000, pp. 39-40; MORGADES, Lourdes. "Don Quixote Travels to the Future at the Liceo". In: El País, 24-IX-2000, p. 38.
(18) NOMMYCK, Ivan. "Don Quixote in Opera". In El Quijote y la música, Centro Virtual Cervantes, http://cvc.cervantes.es/ACTCULT/quijote_musica/nommick.html
(19) DERRIDA, Jacques. "The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation". In DERRIDA, Jacques. Two Essays, Barcelona: Cuadernos Anagrama, 1972, pp. 37-74, p. 44.
(20) TURINA, J. L. "D.Q. (Don Quixote in Barcelona)", p. 701. Turina would highlight that his previous work La raya en el agua was not an opera; similarly, La Fura considered their show an approach to the operatic world.
(21) See DERRIDA, Jacques. "The Law of Genre". In: Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1980; and FOWLER, Alastair. Kinds of Literature. An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge/Mass, Harvard University Press, 1982.
(22) José Antonio Ruiz Rojo, in reviewing the presence of Don Quixote in music, clarifies regarding D.Q. that it is more of a "multimedia show" than an opera. See RUIZ ROJO, José Antonio. "Don Quixote in Music". Sound Mirrors of the Cervantine Myth. In Ritmo, no. 781 (2005).
(23) Indeed, many of the criticisms of D.Q. were based on the idea that the music was drowned out by special effects and complicated scenery. Note that this criterion is not even valid for opera as it is conceived today; the repertoire revisions carried out especially in the last two decades give prominence to the scenographer’s vision, a situation that has led a large number of "theatrical" artistic directors to approach the genre. See ENCABO, E. "The Challenge of Operatic Reinterpretation".
(24) And without this effort, the reading and the work itself are incomplete. This vision of meaning construction fully enters reception theory, in that enunciative function of the audience as co-enunciator, that is, as re-creator, and even, co-creator of the work.
(25) Postmodernity does not stand against tradition; it reinterprets it and takes from it the elements that interest it most. This position, which is not new in art history, gains strength by placing irreconcilable elements on the same plane as the driving force of the work of art.
(26) TURINA, José Luis. "Pulse to Spanish Opera Today. Luis de Pablo, Antón García Abril, Cristóbal Halffter, and José Luis Turina". In: El Cultural, 7-III-2001. In addition to this article, in "Criticism as an Accident", the composer noted: "In the theater of the Ramblas, I could feel the passionate reaction of a lively and enthusiastic audience, who applauded and cheered in equal measure to the extent that they booed and stomped on the show they had just witnessed: anything was palpable, except the indifference that some commentators noted in their reviews".
(27) Until that moment, they had experimented with Atlántida, 1996; Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien, 1997; La Damnation de Faust, 1999; and starting with D.Q. , they would bring to the stage Auf Den Marmorklippen, 2002: Die Zauberflöte, 2003; Der Ring des Nibelungen, 2007; A kékszakállú herceg vára (Bluebeard's Castle) , 2008... with good reviews from the press, as can be seen in RUIZ MANTILLA, J. "La Fura más profana".
(28) In this regard, Luis G. Iberni included it in his list of "throwaway" operas, in an article in which he denounced the difficulty of presenting new operas in the operatic circuit. See IBERNI, Luis. "Operas de usar y tirar". In El Cultural, 1-V-2003.
(29) Something that unfortunately has not happened with any of the latest operas premiered in Spain (Gª Abril, Halffter, De Pablo...).
(30) If we want to continue talking about a genre (understanding the article "a" also as a unit versus multiplicity) that we have seen is complex, protean, and changing. Perhaps it is more clarifying to use "opera" as a generic that, rather than defining, identifies, that is, is related to principles of reconstruction and interpretation, and affects the evaluation of meaning, not principles of classification. In fact, we can assume as a truth that each work, especially those born with a radically modern vocation, is ultimately unique in its definitive formulation.