Being just back from London, with the reflectors of all the world pointed at them, holding the throne of the 50Best, the Roca brothers couldn’t have chosen a better moment to raise the curtain over an unprecedented project. It’s called El Somni, a noun which in Spanish recalls sleep and dream. It is the universal artwork, a term with which Richard Wagner wanted, in his case, to reproduce the theatrical works of Ancient Greece, the synthesis, in one unique representation, of the thrill of artists with the most different creative talents.
Joan e Jordi Roca blow El Somni's first candle out
unites the work of chefs, audio and visual artists, composers, lyrical singers, musicians, photographers, poets, linguists, designers, painters, philosophers, artisans. This work reaches its climax in a diameter of a few metres, staged by the
Arts Santa Monica, on Barcelona’s Ramblas. A circular table set for 12 people who walk on the bare earth and are overwhelmed by 12 acts, with as many changes of scene which, over two hours, draw a 3D plot on the tablecloth/screen and on the truly artistic tableware holding the dishes characterised by the deliciousness the
Roca-
aficionados know so well.
All around, there’s the discontinuous siege of waiters dressed in black and the constant one of robotic clocks, pulsing lights and giant curved screens which, coherently with the images and the dishes on the table, reproduce, in turn, lyrical songs, idyllic scenes, oneiric explorations, astral odysseys, mythological representations, war horrors, sensual carnalities and Grand-Guignol-style roughness signed by dozens of artists and timed by Josep Roca, as magnetic as in Girona, in his illustration of the dishes and of the wines, and in announcing with solemn words each change of scene: «the individual», «the regeneration of life», «the sea», «death» (for more details, see the videos and the photo-gallery below).
Josep Roca, our Virgil of El Somni
The spark to this thrilling plot sparked 7 months ago when
Joan,
Josep and
Jordi Roca met the Catalan audio-visual-artist
Franc Aleu, and immediately included a fantastic
multidisciplinary staff with the help of
Media Pro, the Catalan giant of tv production (it holds the rights to the
Liga and has produced
Woody Allen’s latest 3 movies) which took on quite a substantial cost. Together they are studying a world tour in order to repeat this universal artwork, with the idea of soon representing it also at the
Celler de Can Roca, their restaurant in Girona.
Writer and scientist Harold McGee, actress Freida Pinto and chef Ferran Adrià, 3 of the 12 'wisemen' who stepped in to support Roca's opera
What’s sure for now is that, as of tomorrow,
El Somni is already a double exhibition open to the public, and that soon a book and a film will be out. This is the right and expected development for a project which, before the lucky preview for 12 journalists, received the enthusiastic approval of as many leading figures in the cultural world, among whom were chef
Ferran Adrià, the great Californian scientist and ambassador of food and
Harold McGee, Catalan artist
Miguel Barcelò. All were ready to pay their tribute to a city, Barcelona «constantly exploring the boundaries of human creativity»,
Adrià pointed out. While for the first time in history, gastronomy isn’t only siding the other arts of exploration: it takes them by the hand.
Video 1: Act 4, Under the sea (music by
Silvia Perez Cruz)
Video 2: Act 9, War (music by:
Wolfgang Mitterer)
Video 3: Atto 11, Glory, the breathing dish
