desymbol: Barcelona Opera House Reopens, Performs In Front Of 2,292 Plants

Imagine playing such a captivating performance that your audience is so stunned and enthralled that they can’t move. It’s every professional musician’s dream! Well, musicians got a small taste of that feeling and got rid of some of their quarantine rust by performing at the reopening of the famous Barcelona Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house on Monday, June 22. Their audience was (technically) live—2,292 plants filled the plush red seats and gave their full attention to the performance.

This was the first performance at the opera house since coronavirus lockdown measures started to be eased in Spain. The mastermind behind the event that included a performance from the UceLi Quartet string quartet was conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia. The quartet performed Puccini’s “Crisantemi.”

The Barcelona Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house reopened on June 22 with a unique performance

Image credits: AP IMAGES

The UceLi Quartet string quartet performed for 2,292 plants

Image credits: Liceu Opera Barcelona

Image credits: daniguinart

Image credits: REUTERS

The mastermind behind the event was conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia

Image credits: Liceu Opera Barcelona

The plants will later be donated to healthcare workers from the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona

Image credits: Liceu Opera Barcelona

Image credits: daniguinart

You can watch a video of the magnificent reopening performance right here

Even though there weren’t any human music-lovers among hiding among the plants, spectators could watch the entire event, the “Concierto para el bioceno,” via livestream from the comfort of their homes. You can watch it right here (opera glasses are optional).

Image credits: Liceu Opera Barcelona

The opera house called the performance a “highly symbolic act that defends the value of art, music, and nature as a letter of introduction to our return to activity.”

Plenty (or would that be planty?) of you Pandas are probably wondering how the opera was able to get so many plants together so quickly. As it turns out, all the plants were brought in from local nurseries. Every single plant will later be donated to a healthcare worker from the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.

The organizers wanted to “offer us a different perspective for our return to activity, a perspective that brings us closer to something as essential as our relationship with nature” after the “strange, painful period” that was the coronavirus pandemic.

The Gran Teatre del Liceu stopped its activity in the middle of March when the Covid-19 crisis got out of hand in Spain. The country has more than 246k coronavirus cases and over 28k people lost their lives to the illness. However, Spain is getting back on its feet and the reopening of the opera house is a small but firm step forward.