A Concert for 2,292 Plants in Barcelona’s Opera House

The Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house in Barcelona had their first concert in months this week, and the audience quietly and politely enjoyed it. Indeed, the crowd of 2,292 potted plants swayed gently to ‘Crisantemi’ by Puccini.

The project is the brainchild of Eugenio Ampudia, who hoped to create a reflection on art, quarantine, and our connection to nature, albeit in potted plant form.

After the concert was finished, his team delivered all the plants to 2,292 health professionals, specifically from the Clínic de Barcelona hospital, with a certificate from the artist.

We love the visual of a grand concert hall playing host to such a collection of green plants, and the four musicians onstage, who will remember such a unique performance forever. Art takes many forms, and we applaud efforts like this, that raise our spirits.

At the end of the eight-minute concert, the sound of leaves and branches blowing in the wind resonated throughout the opera house like applause.
 -AP

The performance took place on June 22, 2020, the day after Spain’s state of emergency ended, and it was titled Concierto para el Bioceno. Ampudia’s point was partly practical, a way to reopen a great theater without risking a human crowd, and partly philosophical, a reminder that the natural world went on without us during lockdown and might deserve a seat in the house. The UceLi Quartet played the string quartet version of Puccini’s Crisantemi, a short elegy he wrote in a single night in 1890. If you like the idea of plants as an audience, our post on timelapse videos of houseplants moving through the day shows how alive they really are, and the world’s most relaxing song is the other half of the equation. The Liceu itself belongs on any list of the world’s most extraordinary buildings.

Edited by Ben VanderVeen · About Moss & Fog

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