Long live Walter Benjamin's operatic biopic

Composers and conductors of all generations gathered this Saturday for the world premiere of Benjamin a Portbou, the first opera by Antoni Ros-Marbà with an English libretto by Anthony Carrol Madigan. This opera aims to be a biopic about the German philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin, based on flashes of different stages of his life, beginning as a flashback with his death – suicide or not – while trying to cross the border between occupied France and Franco's Spain in September 1940.

This Liceu commission, commissioned by General Director Joan Francesc Marco, has been waiting nine years to be premiered. But yesterday, fortunately, the Barcelona composer himself (born in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat) conducted it from the pit, at the age of 88. The performance left no one indifferent.

This foray into the thinker's life and work, not without humor, deserved eight minutes of applause.

"It has atmosphere, magic, mystery; Ros-Marbà knows how to orchestrate very well, and the balance with the singers is excellent. But I ask for more from an opera; I ask for longer orchestral interludes, I ask for a theme, that leitmotif that you come out singing... In any case, it's an interesting work," opined maestro Salvador Brotons at the end of the premiere.

Composer Benet Casablancas described it as excellent news that a musician of such stature has been able to develop as a composer with "an opera whose solvency and coherence are beyond doubt." For Fabià Santcovsky, a generationally younger, this Benjamin a Portbou seems like an opera by someone who has had a career as a composer, "with an aesthetic perhaps set in that early 20th-century context, but with an orchestral mastery that is rarely seen."

There were opposing opinions among the audience, from die-hard fans to those more than satisfied, as what was initially intended to be a semi-staged version ended up as a full-fledged opera thanks to the intervention of Playmodes, whose 12x6 metre light installation Signes acted as a backdrop, providing a variable – and even random – geometry that diversified and dynamised the atmospheres of these 13 scenes in two acts into which the title is divided.

And all of this in communion with the stage direction of Anna Ponces, who makes bread out of stones: the magnificent chorus recreates the flight of the refugees in the shadows on a recurring basis, and Ponces even uses the lights in the hall to turn Benjamin himself (a great performance by tenor Peter Tantsits) into a character in a theatre within a theatre, that “dispossessed intellectual”, “still anchored in German tragic drama”, as the character of the Latvian theatre director Asja Lacis (a powerful Elena Copons) reproaches him when, in the midst of a fight between intellectuals, she scolds him for overindulging in chocolate...

This foray into Benjamin's life and work, into his fears and those childish and misogynistic outbursts he displays in the domestic sphere, earned eight minutes of warm applause. And yet, halfway through, some considered it a less than "empathetic" opera, in the sense that it required an effort to listen but, ultimately, failed to move. Nor did the libretto convince everyone, for being "shallow, considering it was a significant figure whose thought shaped an entire century."

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The cast excelled in their vocal rather than lyrical writing. Marta Valero as Hannah Arendt, Laura Vila as the wife, the infallible Joan Martín-Royo as Gerhard Scholem, David Alegre as Bertolt Brecht... and, finally, Serena Sáenz, who, hanging from a harness from high above the stage, plays the Angelus Novus that emerges from a Paul Klee drawing and is meant to guide the world on the right path...

From the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández, to the Mayor of Portbou, Gael Rodríguez, to the Deputy Consul General of Germany, Patrick Heinz, and the Director General of Memorial Democràtic, Jordi Font... all the institutions that in one way or another have a connection with the life and death of Walter Benjamin were present at a Gran Teatre that was 80% full. This Tuesday was the second and final performance, hoping that, given the libretto is in English, it will have a long run in theaters abroad.