Sotelo: El Público, Teatro Real, 2015 (detail) View full image

El Público premieres in Madrid

Composed by Mauricio Sotelo and with set designs by Alexander Polzin, El Público is Lorca’s most difficult and mysterious play, and one of the great classics of modern Spanish theatre. Lorca wrote it in Cuba, just after his trip to New York, at a time of intense experimentation in art and life.

El Público considers the theme of art as an instrument for transforming reality, not in a merely political sense, but totally. Lorca was convinced, along with the surrealists, that art had the ability to transform human beings. In the same spirit, composer Mauricio Sotelo and librettist Andrés Ibañez, along with sculptor and set designer Alexander Polzin, have taken up the challenge of transforming El Público into a twenty-first-century opera.

Alexander Polzin's exhibition Remains is on at Maestro Arts until 2 April 2015.

For a preview of El Público