Commerce and Culture Year is bringing Puccini’s opera “Manon Lescaut” to Nou Barris’ Plaça Major

Commerce and Culture Year's activities are bringing Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Manon Lescaut” to Nou Barris’ Plaça Major this coming Saturday, 16 June, starting at 10 pm. It will be broadcast live from the Liceu itself, in the "Liceu takes to the open air” programme, and screened at numerous points throughout Catalonia and the Spanish State, as well as in Italy, France, Portugal and Andorra.

Everyone is invited. Saturday’s activity is free, although members of the public can obtain tickets in advance in exchange for a purchase they make in shops associated with the district's commercial hubs. This way, people with tickets will be able to access the stalls from 9 pm onwards, and those without tickets, from 9.15 pm. Around a thousand people will gather in Nou Barris’ Plaça Major where they will be able to see a live broadcast of the opera on a big screen put up there for the occasion.

"Manon Lescaut” was the first big success for Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), one of the most important composers of his generation, whose genre was known as “verismo” or “realism”, where the emotion and realism of emotions prevailed in opera. It was the third opera whose style typified the rest of Puccini’s operatic output, a true apotheosis of melodrama.

Commerce and Culture Year

This is one of the planned activities for Commerce and Culture Year which, up to October, aims to highlight Barcelona’s magnificent cultural showcase and the historical identity of the city’s commerce.

For an entire year, Barcelona will experience a continuous wave of activities linking up its plural and local economy with its cultural creativity and initiative. So, besides opera, there will also be dance, theatre, poetry readings, literary and film competitions, sculpture and painting, guided tours and discounts for shows filling every commercial hub in the city until October.