“West Side Story” arrives in Huesca to turn it into a Broadway theater

The Huesca Conference Center will become an authentic Broadway theater with the “West Side Story” concert . The show is part of the III Lyric and Dance Season and will be staged on June 1 , at 6:00 p.m.

When “West Side Story” was presented in New York in 1957 , with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, musicals were never the same. Its sophisticated melodies, brilliant instrumentation , and approach to the social problems of the time marked a turning point in American musical theater . Loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, the story of “West Side Story” takes place in New York in the 1950s , exploring the rivalry between two youth gangs : the Jets and the Sharks. Everything will get complicated when Tony, a former member of the Jets, falls in love with María, sister of the leader of the Sharks.

This new production by the Government of Aragon will be developed in a semi-staged version. The Enigma Group, directed by Asier Puga, will perform the virtuoso original score that Leonard Bernstein composed for the musical. In this production the score will be presented in its original version for an orchestra of almost 40 soloists, with a great effective percussion instrumental, where the most traditional symphonic instruments are mixed, such as the timpani or the vibraphone, with others of Latin influence such as the congas, the güiro, bongó, claves, different types of maracas.

The production has a cast of 15 soloists , as well as a narrator , who will develop the plot devised by Arthur Laurents between the various musical numbers. The proposal is completed with a costume design, original for this production, made by the designers Bruno Sendín, Bryan Anthony Cedeño and Adhemar Abad Gómez, who have prepared a costume with a clear contemporary influence , but based on the aesthetic tradition of each role, as well as the psychological reality of each character.

The price to enjoy the show, which will take place in the Carlos Saura Auditorium of the Palacio de Congresos, is 30 euros in the audience and 25 euros in the amphitheater . There are discounts for friends of the palace, students of the Higher Conservatory of Music and Dance, and holders of the cultural card and the youth card. Tickets can be purchased at the palace box office and on its website.

LYRIC AND DANCE SEASON

The third season of Lyric and Dance began on January 27 with the staging of the play “The Red Thread”, by the German company Tanzensemble Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, with Luisa Sancho Escanero from Zaragoza as director. The programming will end in November with two showings (Friday the 15th, at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday the 17th, at 5:00 p.m.) of “Lucia di Lammermoor”, the romantic and dramatic opera par excellence.

The Teatro Principal will once again host Donizetti’s most important success along with “L’elisir d’amore” and “Don Pasquale” , after he already did it for the first time in 1840 and 15 years after his last performance of it in the Aragonese capital.