Artists
Àlex Ollé (Stage manager)
La Fura started as a street theater group acting in different towns and cities around Catalonia. This first phase lasted 5 years and was a time when the group was experimenting with many of the aesthetic features that would later form their distinct theatrical language.
1984
Accions (Actions) had its debut in Barcelona, as part of the Cicle de Teatre Obert. Accions, which was performed 118 times in different cities, already clearly showed the key features of the Furan language: interaction with the audience, the use of unusual spaces and the adaptation of the show to the characteristics of each space. This performance catapulted La Fura into the international theater scene, where they were hailed as a cult group.
1985
Just one year after the debut of Accions, the company presented Suz/O/Suz, the second installment of the Trilogy. With this show La Fura crossed borders and set off on an international tour comprised of more than 290 performances, the longest of the group’s history even today. Suz/O/Suz provides La Fura with a look and feel to their shows that is now clearly identifiable.
1988
The Trilogy is completed by Tier Mon, perhaps the darkest and most pessimistic of La Fura’s shows to date. While Suz/O/Suz reflected on man in the abstract through ritualization, Tier Mon deals with power and domination mechanisms based on the control of food, energy and religious faith.
1990
With the Trilogy complete, La Fura opened themselves up to the search for a more complex and sophisticated scenic language. Their starting point was the idea that Chaos is the primordial source for creation, and in Noun they embraced technologically advanced scenic resources, in contrast to the production values they had employed up until that point.
1992
Inquiry has always been a constant feature in the work of La Fura dels Baus, ever since the beginning. When the Olympic Games were scheduled for Barcelona in 1992, the company received the commission to conceive and develop a performance for the opening ceremonies. Mediterráneo, mar olímpico was the result, and it brought La Fura dels Baus to an audience of billions of people throughout the world. From that moment, the group begins to explore the possibilities of performances designed for a mass audience.
1994
The temptation to develop a show about manipulation resulted in MTM, probably the most “political” work La Fura has created. In MTM the Furan language, now perfectly consolidated, was combined with a staging where video and mirror play lead to different readings of what is “true”. The major innovations of MTM are in its use of textual language, a first for La Fura.
1996
In this year La Fura began a new working method: various projects were developed at the same time under the direction of different members of the group. This change in the company’s internal protocols brought about the development of Pepsíclope in 1996, a macro-​performance designed to present a commercial product; Manes, a Furan language performance continuing along the lines of Tier Mon and MTM, and La Atlántida, the group’s first staging of an opera.
1997
The first taste of opera with La Atlántida, enriched by the collaboration with Jaume Plensa, was continued with The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. The work by Debussy, laden with symbols and alternate readings, fit perfectly with the group’s aesthetic and reaffirmed their relationship to opera.
In 1997 La Fura also developed Symbiosis, a traveling large-​scale performance that visited several European cities to celebrate the launch of a new car model.
1998
F@ust 3.0 and Ombra (Shadow) were the two performances that La Fura premiered in 1998. The first, F@ust 3.0, was significant for two reasons in particular: it was the first time the group approached the myth of Faust and, in addition, the first that used an Italianate theater as a setting. The idea of Faust, so close to modern art and modern man, will be a theme that La Fura will return to in the future.
Ombra, the second of the works by La Fura this year, revolved around the figure of the poet Federico García Lorca and brought the group’s work to a more intimist formula, but without giving up the strength that characterized their work.
1999
In the year that marked the end of the century and the dawn of a new millennium, La Fura presented three performances, each with a very different format and intentions. Furamòbil (Furamobile), the first of the three, returned to the very Furan concept of demanding audience participation, as the show/machine was set in motion by the spectators/participants.
La condenación de Fausto (The Damnation of Faust), the staging of the opera by Berlioz, was the company’s second look at the Faustian myth and was extraordinarily successful when it debuted in the Salzburg Festival. This show, developed in collaboration with Jaume Plensa, signaled La Fura’s arrival to the mature phase of its relationship with the opera.
For La Fura the century drew to a close, literally, with a macro-​performance, L’home del mil·leni (Millennium Man), which took place in the center of Barcelona to celebrate the new year, the new century and the new millennium.
2000
Using a hallowed classic text, Macbeth, as its starting point, La Fura developed ØBS, a Furan language performance characterized not only by its adaptation of a well-​known play, but also for its exploration of certain resources, such as 3D images and the preparation of the project via videoconferencing.
The other big project for La Fura dels Baus in 2000 was DQ. Don Quixote in Barcelona, a newly created opera, with music by José Luis Turina and libretto by Justo Navarro, which debuted in Barcelona’s Teatro del Liceo and recreated a futuristic plot centered on the figure of the ingenious knight from La Mancha. The scenic design was created by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue.
2001
Once again La Fura takes on three new projects in a single year.
La navaja en el ojo (Knife in the Eye), a macro-​performance that took place in Valencia’s Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias to celebrate that city’s First Biennial, was seen by an audience of more than 30,000 people and recreated the seven deadly sins using highly sophisticated scenic elements.
Fausto 5.0 (Faust 5.0), the last part of La Fura’s Faustian trilogy, is the first film created entirely by the group, in collaboration with Isidro Ortiz. The film, which won the Melies Award for best fantastical European film, was a hit with critics and audiences alike.
Las Troyanas (The Trojan Women), Euripides’s classic that has been making us reflect -for thousands of years- on war and its consequences, was La Fura’s final project for 2009, in collaboration with the legendary Irene Papas.
2002
A particularly fruitful year for the company. Four projects were debuted, along four very different lines.
Sobre los acantilados de mármol (On the Marble Cliffs), an opera based on the novel of the same name by Ernst Jünger debuted on the 8th of March, and was performed 12 times at the Nationaltheater of Mannheim, with music by Giorgio Battistelli, texts by Giorgio Van Staten and staging by La Fura dels Baus.
Two months later, at the Teatro Guerra de Lorca of Murcia was the premiere of XXX, a work based on the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, which toured Europe and the Americas extensively. XXX revisited concepts such as sexuality, pornography and violence as seen through La Fura’s particular vision.
In June, the macro-​performance The Divine Comedy, an adaptation of the classic by Dante Aligheri created especially for the Classico Italia was seen in Florence’s Piazza Pitti by an audience of thousands.
And, lastly, barely 20 days later, at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, La Fura dels Baus debuted their particular staging of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. This important musical piece had never before been adapted to the stage.
2003
The major project for this year was the staging of The Magic Flute, once more in collaboration with Jaume Plensa, one of the most relevant visual artists on the contemporary scene. This version by La Fura dels Baus of one of the most well-​known and celebrated operas of all time, explores the subconscious based on the abundant symbolism contained in the work, which has been the subject of reflection and study ever since it was first performed in 1791.
2004
The search for new surroundings in which to perform that could be adapted to fit their aesthetic and artistic trajectory lead La Fura dels Baus to acquire an old cargo ship on which to construct the Naumon project. The boat, outfitted as a stage and a hub for performances, offered different scenic possibilities and sparked a series of performances, in different formats, centered around the idea of a journey, of an itinerant scenic setting.
2005
A piece designed for the traditional Italianate theater, Metamorphosis, received unanimous praise from critics. This performance, based on Franz Kafka’s most emblematic text, offered a reflection on loneliness and otherness, the recognition of the other, the different.
That same year, for the celebration of the Mediterranean Games in Almeria, La Fura was commissioned to design the opening ceremonies. The result was Al-​mariyat Bayyana, a macro-​performance that re-​examined the host city’s history from a recreation of its major moments.
2007
The company’s activities have been diversified to the maximum. In this year they designed the opening ceremony for the World Track Cycling Championship using a large-​scale performance that symbolized the sport’s dynamics and the union of countries coming together in competition; they debuted Imperium, a Furan language performance that is still currently touring; they performed the macro-​performance Cutty Sark Shanghai-​London in various Spanish cities; and, lastly, they participated in the project La hija del cielo (Daughter of Heaven), the first opera entirely from the Canary Islands, in subject and development. Also in 2007, The Rhine Gold premiered in Valencia, the first of the four operas that compose The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner.
2008
La Fura dels Baus participated in Adeu a la tele (Goodbye TV) (an exhibition on the end of analog television and the switchover to DTV) and La ciudad inventada (The Invented City) (a program of performances in Logroño designed as urban interventions). In addition, two more installments of the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung, Siegfried and The Valkyrie, have their debut, as well as Boris Godunov, a daring reflection on the problem of terrorism, its limits and the manipulation it generates.
2009
The year begins with the staging of Le grand macabre, an opera by Ligeti, which took place at the Opera Theater of Brussels using a set shaped as a large human figure.
