Antony & Cleopatra by John Adams

The Liceu hosts the European premiere of the new opera based on Shakespeare’s famous drama.

This two-act opera, commissioned for the centennial of the San Francisco Opera, is a co-commission and co-production with the Liceu Opera Barcelona and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. With a libretto adapted by the composer himself from Shakespeare’s tragedy, composer John Adams, director Elkhanah Pulitzer and playwright Lucia Scheckner combine the mythic image of antiquity with the glamour of 1930s Hollywood.  

Cleopatra (Julia Bullock) is the most psychologically textured character of all the Shakespearean female roles. Her extraordinary human qualities are expressed throughout the play: narcissism, intelligence, capacity for seduction and eroticism, ethical ambivalence, military bravery, indulgence and, ultimately, her true capacity to love. However, in her love game with Antony (Gerald Finley), she reveals real human vulnerability that transcends her self-control. Immersed in a conflict: her love for Antony and the struggle to remain in power; when she realises her defeat, full of scars impossible to erase, she chooses suicide over the humiliation of being brought back to Rome as a trophy of Caesar’s (Paul Appelby) military triumph.