THE CROWD WENT WILD

Having stood silent since mid-March due to you-know-what, Barcelona’s opera house reopened on Monday with a string quartet playing Puccini to a full house — 2,292 living, breathing audience members, not a single one of whom was wearing a mask or worried in the slightest about social distancing. They were, after all, plants. The Concierto para el Bioceno (Concert for New Life) took place the day after Spain lifted its threemonth state of emergency. Its borders have now opened to Schengen countries and its museums, concert halls, cinemas, cafés and restaurants may reopen, but with limited capacity.

The show at the opera house, a performance of Puccini’s Crisantemi by the UceLi Quartet, was the result of a collaboration between conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia, the Max Estrella gallery and the theatre, which billed it as “the prelude to the 2020/21 season”. Humans were able to attend the concert through a live stream at liceubarcelona.cat/en, where a recording is available to view.

Amusingly, before the music starts, a plea over the loudspeaker reminds the plants to turn off their cellphones and to refrain from taking photos or making any noise that could spoil others’ enjoyment of the music.

Ampudia was set to produce a video-art piece and several large-format pictures in the days after the show. See maxestrella.com.

The opera house calls it “a highly symbolic act that defends the value of art, music and nature as a letter of introduction to our return to activity”.

The plants came from local nurseries and will be donated, along with a certificate from the artist, to local health-care workers.

To stand a chance of winning R500, tell us the ● name of the opera house. E-mail travelquiz@sundaytimes.co.za before noon on Tuesday June 30. Last week’s winner is Guy Gafney. The correct answer was Bergen.