Opera "The Exterminating Angel" by Thomas Adès
15 April 2027 – 22 April 2027 · 19:30
Gran Teatre del Liceu, el Raval, Ciutat Vella
Luis Buñuel's film of the same name becomes an almost mythical origin for The Exterminating Angel, Thomas Adès's opera, with the brilliant composer himself also conducting the performances at the Liceu. Adès transforms that unsettling universe into a fascinating sonic architecture: music charged with effects, unusual textures and subtle tensions that opens the doors to a ritual slowly coming apart. Calixto Bieito's acclaimed production for the Opéra national de Paris places the audience in a bourgeois, apparently civilised space: an aristocratic drawing room that, after an elegant dinner, reveals the fragility of its rituals. Where there should be meaning, there is only repetition; where there should be freedom, suffocating inertia accumulates. It is within this dislocation that the exterminating angel emerges: an invisible force that fractures order and exposes the sacrilegious character of a society that has forgotten the true meaning of the sacred. The guests, unable to leave the room, witness the dissolution of language, hierarchies and relationships. Elegance turns into animality; the drawing room becomes a corrupted altar where desire and fear displace all etiquette. Adès's…
Source: Ajuntament de Barcelona · checked on 8 September 2026