Long live 'Carmina Burana' with its fantastic furry images.

It may not be exactly an opera, that Carmina Burana with which Carl Orff became known – alas – in the Nazi circles of pre-war Germany, but the staging and dramaturgy devised by Carlus Padrissa in 2009 to stage this set of joyful cantatas raises the expectation of a magnum opus wherever he goes. Not in vain is it “music for fantastic images,” as the composer himself indicated at the end of the score, and that is how literally the co-founder of La Fura dels Baus took it when he created a genuine diversion with this collection of 12th and 13th century songs written by medieval goliards: hippie monks who, apart from praising God, were fond of celebrating life, wine, and sex.

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“For me, it was like a diversion, after doing the Tetralogy at Les Arts de València and before starting Les Troyens , which was a five-hour juggernaut. We did Carmina Burana with the intention of having a good time. And this energy has lasted the entire time,” Padrissa recalls hours before the curtain rose on Tuesday and the popular “O Fortuna, velut luna statu variabilis...” was heard at the Tivoli, where it will remain until June 1.

When this Carl Orff production was released in 2009, no one thought that 16 years later it would fill even more theaters.

The play has been seen by more than half a million spectators on three continents. Fifteen years after its premiere, it has filled more theaters than at the beginning: it played 27 performances at the Teatro Apolo in Madrid last year, and 16 again at the Tívoli in Barcelona, ​​before moving on to Caracas and Miami, and after having already made a splash at Mexico's National Auditorium in front of 10,000 people.

“We've had 357 performances; we couldn't imagine that 16 years later we'd be filling even more theaters,” says Francesc Prat, head of tours and special projects at the Camera Agency. “We've just arrived from El Ejido; it's been crazy, especially in the rest of Spain. And it's true that 10% of the audience comes from the opera world, but it's not about seeing an opera.”

Next project And a 'Carmen' to inaugurate the Veranos de la Villa

The Veranos de la Villa festival opens on July 7 with a massive popular production by Carlus Padrissa of Bizet's Carmen , adapted for a band by the Catalan composer Marc Migó. The cigarette girl will fly on the back of a mechanical bird in front of 25,000 people on Madrid's new Puente del Rey stage, while singing "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle." And one of her large heads will end up in flames... as a metaphor for the crime she is the victim of.

Indeed, although there are more than fifty artists on stage, it consists of 24 short pieces. Not even the music aims to be as sophisticated as that of an opera. Furthermore, there is now a 20-minute introduction in which, with a score by the musical director himself, César Belda, in the same key as the work, the Goliards are explained in Latin (with subtitles). On the other hand, every attempt to modernize the production has failed. The original is better, with the cranes, the analog technology, the painting and drawing projected onto a large cylinder eight meters in diameter that surrounds the musicians and rotates, giving a certain sensation of 3D images.

“Simplicity is what works here; there's no need to spoil it by trying to modernize it,” Padrissa adds. “It's happened to us that two plus two doesn't equal four, but 22 in this Carmina Burana . I like how David Cid's video with Sagar Fornies' drawings has aged, as well as Chu Uroz's costumes. When we made it, we thought we'd gone too extravagant, but it's becoming a classic.”

I like how David Cid's video has aged, as well as Chu Uroz's costumes. When we made them, we thought we'd gone too extravagant, but it's becoming a classic. Carlus Padrissa Theater director of La Fura dels Baus

The Furero is also moving forward with his theatrical boat project, Naumon. He has created a Furero theater piece with his own music—"I was the composer in La Fura," he points out—titled SONS , the initials of To Be or Not to Be ( but also sounds in Catalan and sons in English). A mix of Calderón's Life is a Dream and Shakespeare's Hamlet , which he has brought to Argentina with considerable success, he notes. Now he's starting a European tour in Málaga, but still on dry land, at the Cervantes University. "I'll retire on the boat," he anticipates. "It's currently in Torrelavega, and we've taken out a loan to tour with it."

Other opera projects in Europe? “They aren't coming out, and I haven't sought them out either. But productions are still being revived, like Turandot in Munich; the last time was with Anna Netrebko's role debut... what a voice!”