Reading about ‘La Gata Perduda‘ in these posts must be a somewhat frustrating experience. After all, it has often been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture – and in an opera co-created with hundreds of non-professionals, there are many more layers that need to be translated from one idiom to another. Happily, Catalonian TV has been documenting the process from the start, producing a five-part series on the project. Ten days ago, the first episode was screened in the Liceu for the people involved and got an enthusiastic reception. It was broadcast last week, and you can watch it here, with English subtitles. They have been generated automatically, so there are occasional mistranslations, the most important of which is that the word ‘cor’ appears as ‘heart’, when it is being used in this context to mean ‘choir’. There are also a couple of unannounced ad-breaks that might confuse. But the film gives a really nice sense of how the project developed and what it meant for the people involved. Anyone interested in community art practice will find it interesting to see.
- Follow this link to watch episode one – ‘The Lost Cat and the unfinished score’
François Matarasso 