British Council Spain and the Teatro Real in Madrid have formed an alliance with BBC Arts Digital to celebrate #OperaPassion Day, taking place on Thursday 19th October, on occasion of the opening of “Opera: Passion, Power and Politics”, a landmark exhibition presented by the Royal Opera House and the V&A Museum in London covering nearly 400 years of opera up to its international explosion in the 20th and 21st centuries.
On that day a series of leading international opera companies and major cultural institutions will work together to provide an unprecedented day of live streaming, via the BBC Arts Digital webpage, which will transport audiences to the world of opera both on stage and behind the scenes. At 11 am (UK time) a production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, specifically adapted for young audiences, will be broadcast from the Teatro Real. At 3.45 pm British Council Spain will interview the Teatro Real’s General Director Ignacio García-Belenguer to find out more about the theatre’s history, its management model, its programmes for new audiences or its international partnerships. An hour later (4.45 pm) it will be the turn of Joan Matabosch, the theatre’s Artistic Director, to talk about how he thinks opera could be presented to make it more relevant to young people, how he would describe the theatre’s artistic strategy, how he would define the challenges facing opera in current times or whether he considers opera has a duty to reflect or make a statement about the political and economic factors governing its social context. Both interviews will be streamed live on British Council Spain’s Facebook page.