Video of the day: Barcelona Opera House played a concert for the trees

AFP announces about the first quarantine concert at the famous Liceo Barcelona Opera House: the listeners were ... the trees.

Irina Ziganshina

The lights turned off, the curtain rose, and the music sounded - this concert could look like all the other performances at the Liceo Opera House, if not a peculiarity about the auditorium: plants displaced people. 2292 ficuses, a monsteras and palm trees captured the stalls, mezzanine and lodges, and their bright greens were surprisingly harmoniously combined with red upholstery plush and stucco gold. The quartet of musicians on the stage, empty since mid-March, played Puccini's Chrysanthemums. With such a performance, the opera house, located in the center of Barcelona, decided to open after quarantine was lifted in the city.

The idea of the performance came to the mind of the conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia during the lockdown, when people sat locked in their homes and nature invaded the city space: birds sang louder than usual, wild animals appeared on the streets, and even domestic plants seemed to grow more energetic than before.

Ampudia’s idea was to make people think about relationships with nature. “I thought, why don't we invade Liceo like weeds, grab it and let nature sprout from everywhere, breathing life into the theater in the absence of people”, - says Ampudia. “I think that all these plants are somehow aware with their whole being, with their cells, with their photosynthesis, that they attended this concert”.

The concert was broadcast live on the theater website - so that everyone who wanted would be able to let their own home plants to listen to it. And the plants “spectators” after the performance were sent as a gift to medical workers who spent the last months at the front lines fighting against coronavirus.