The Ritual's Frailty — Thomas Adès: The Exterminating Angel

Luis Buñuel's film: a mythical origin for Thomas Adès' opera. An unsettling universe transformed into sound architecture. Unusual textures, subtle tensions. Adès himself conducts from the Liceu pit. Calixto Bieito, from Opéra national de Paris, sets the action in a bourgeois salon. A social ritual slowly unravels. The fragility of established norms. The disconnect between meaning and mere repetition. Trapped guests, unable to leave the room. Dissolution of language, hierarchy, bonds. Elegance morphs into animality. A corrupted altar where desire and fear override all etiquette. Redemption arrives not by force, but by surrender: the door opens upon acknowledging vulnerability. The work offers no moral. It exposes a wound. True sacrilege: empty routine, self-satisfaction. Only art, through its capacity to unsettle, can reopen the door to the sacred. — Stage Direction Calixto Bieito, Musical Direction Thomas Adès, Gran Teatre del Liceu Symphony Orchestra Approximate duration: 2h 15 min