I still remember the wave of sensations that came over me on Saturday 19 November 2011 as I watched the Spanish premiere of Le Grand Macabre, a György Ligeti opera from 1978 that, today, represents a cornerstone in the history of music. The event was held at Barcelona’s Teatro del Liceu, a venue which, given the country’s political circumstances, I may cease to consider Spanish at some point in the future. It was a La Fura dels Baus production. The event would have been little more than another entry in the musical almanacs, were it not for the fact that it took place during the blackout period for the early elections held on 20 November, which had been called on 28 July in that same year. In the opera world, where programmes are set years in advance, fate had caused the electoral event to coincide with the premiere of a work which is highly critical of politics. It was already clear, moreover, that the ferocity of the economic crisis would lead the right wing to power just hours after the performance, as indeed it did, and this heightened the atmosphere in the hall still further.

In 2018, another early election meant that the Spanish premiere of Der Diktator by E. Krenek at Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza, scheduled almost two years earlier, coincided with the end of campaigning for the Andalusian elections at a critical moment in European and Spanish politics. But not only that – it also coincided with the debate on Catalan independence still on the table, the territorial conflict caused by Brexit for those working in Gibraltar but living on the border with La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz province), and the rise of fascism hanging over our heads. This time, I was directing the production.

The fact that opera and society go hand-in-hand should be anything but a noteworthy exception. I view opera as a social tool which can and should prompt the audience to reflect as individuals and as members of society, and the coincidence of the elections seems to me to be an excellent opportunity to conduct such an exercise.

I would have said all of this at the project launch, a crucial moment before the first rehearsal that allows the singers to familiarise themselves with the concept the director wishes to explore. But there was no launch. The artistic director, who is also the musical director of the production, believes there’s too little time left to spend it working out what the hell we’re doing – I later reach the conclusion that he feared I would present the work to the singers in excessively political terms – and replaces the launch with a musical rehearsal.

OK, so we’re going to start working without knowing what the hell we’re doing and, on top of that, he steals my rehearsal. I get really angry. I read the newspaper to demonstrate my discontent while the soloists sing. The current president of the region, from the Socialist party, has travelled to Madrid to attend a commission investigating the corruption of her party in the Andalusian government, where it has been in power for more than thirty years. There are four weeks to go and I have no idea who to vote for; the left wing in the region is rotten to the core but the right-wing parties are too present in the media to not use a tactical vote to try and stop them. The musical director shouts at a young singer for failing to pronounce the German words correctly and makes fun of him in front of everyone.

After postponing my initial intervention by four hours with an unscheduled musical rehearsal – it bothers me when people don’t respect my creative space – I’m finally able to explain the concept to those involved in producing Diktator, a work by E. Krenek originally inspired by Mussolini. I begin my speech by noting how Europe boasts of its values in comparison with the capitalist USA, while actually copying everything we criticise about the world’s leading power. ‘It’s easy to have principles, but it’s more difficult to consistently live by them,’ I tell them, showing them a photo from my newspaper which shows the regional centre-right candidate having lunch with his family while the national party leader’s family eats at McDonald’s. WTF?

I talk about the dual erotic strength of power – power seduces politicians, the powerful seduce citizens – and about the use of armed force to magnify the figure of a leader in a narcissistic manner, mentioning several conflicts marked by US involvement which I would like to refer to in the staging – the Second World War, Vietnam, the Gulf. I also talk about how Tony Blair apologised for invading Iraq without sufficient evidence but Aznar failed to do the same. A young Spanish singer asks me who Tony Blair is and I almost have to fight back tears. The baritone lead, one of the most prominent and reputed singers in Germany, seizes the opportunity to interrupt me: he would prefer to rehearse than hear about the concept. ‘Too many words,’ he says, looking at me suspiciously, convinced that I am nothing more than a post-adolescent altar boy saying things which are too important for me to possibly know what I’m talking about.

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