WORKS SEARCH
| Mestres Cabanes was stage designer at the Liceu but he was also a stage designer with an artistic value far beyond the strictly local scene and he forms part of a perfectly defined international stage design trend: Wagnerian stage design. Mestres Cabanes did not limit himself to making classical opera sets, coinciding with the Wagnerian fervour in Catalonia he also became, almost unintentionally, one of the best Wagnerian theatre designers of all time. The artist created these sets at the peak of his artistic career, when he had already fully mastered all the techniques and problems of stage design. Mestres Cabanes restored some of the old decoration at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Under the direction of his teacher, Salvador Alarma, he had worked on the most popular operas of all time: Boris Godunov, L’Africaine, The Barber of Seville, Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Tannhäuser, Tosca, Aida, Rigoletto, Thaïs, etc. He had studied, worked and broken down every corner of the stage. He knew what gave good results and how things went wrong. This happened in the twenties and when, in 1941, he agreed to move to the Liceu studio and work on new sets, the artist taking up the post was easily the best at his job in Spain and one of the best in Europe. Of the eight operas he designed at the Liceu, the first were acts I and II of Lohengrin (Vilomara’s nuptial chamber was kept), which opened on 22 January 1942. Mestres was already able to put the results of all his studies and research on perspective into these first Wagnerian sets. The attention to detail and veracity that marks his work is impressive and the contrast between light and shade was studied as carefully as possible. That same month, January 1942, the second of the eight stage designs and three paintings appeared for the first time in act II of Parsifal. (the rest of the set was by Vilomara and Junyent). Later, the Liceu continued to commission sets from him for Ariadna (where he combined his own elements with existing ones, although it was only used in the 1942-1943 and has not been used since), The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (four paintings), Aida (seven paintings, notable for their deep realism and historical faithfulness), Siegfried (four paintings), Canigó (one painting), and Tristan and Isolda (three paintings; this is the Mestres stage design that has been used most times at the Gran Teatre del Liceu). The process followed by Mestres was the same every time: first he made a complete, detailed sketch. He coloured the sketch, incorporating figures to study the proportions. He then spoke to the technician in charge of stage machinery to discuss the problems that might arise. He then assembled the sketch in the form of a set model. With it, he could properly study the possible faults in the design and the proper lighting, correcting and improving details. After he had presented the model to those responsible for the production and to the Society of the Gran Teatre del Liceu for their approval, everything was ready to create the set itself. Finally he prepared a scale grid on glass or cellophane which was placed on the loose pieces of the model so they could be expanded to full size. The paper making up the different pieces of the set was then cut up. |
Set model for Parsifal. Act II, second picture: Flower girls’ enchanted garden.
Set model for Aida. Act III: Banks of the Nile, near the temple of Isis, at night (1945). |
