disPLACE

ÒPERA about houses, people and evictions

disPLACE is an opera by the young composers Raquel García-Tomás and Joan Magrané Figuera, with a libretto by the playwright Helena Tornero.

The creation is a production by the Musiktheatertage Wien Festival and Opera de Butxaca i Nova Creació de Barcelona, which commissioned the author to write a libretto about the issue of gentrification.

The request was to write two stories dealing with the same issue from two different perspectives, as each story was to be created for a different composer. The author decided to write two stories separated in time but connected by the place where they took place: a flat at the centre of Barcelona.

Gentrification is a problem affecting thousands of districts of cities all over the world, Barcelona city being one of the cases where the situation is getting worse due to real estate speculation, the Spanish mortgage laws, the social impact of the economic crisis and the contradictions caused by current tourism politics.