1853. It rains over Paris. An argument between the nobleman Alfredo and the courtesan Violetta. Two families at odds. A carnival party. A drama that moves unstoppably towards tragedy. How to tell today one of the greatest love stories of all time?

TRAVIATA is a completely renewed vision of the most performed opera in the world from different arts.

TRAVIATA has its genesis when I decide to leave my studio to build something that has never been done before: Using a Transmedia Narrative approach to painting. The objective: to innovate in the way of telling stories from the paintings.

It became such a big story that it overflowed the limit of my workshop and spread among other creators within the arts of cinema, theater, photography, music, dance and expanded the narration beyond the original script. We torned Verdi's opera apart to recreate it under a new look. Each artist would get inspired by others and and remix it.

Each artist brought their vision of the story and worked with their medium. All working on the same stage, with the same actors and dancers, under the same spotlights but with different perspectives.

This technique is called Transmedia, but it was the first time that it was used for painting and that the designer of the project was a painter.

We addressed the five central scenes of the opera, which take place during the Paris Carnival in the palace of Flora, Violetta's friend.

A Masquerade Party where the events that lead to the final drama were unleashed.

The story of the unfortunate love of its protagonists opens up to other stories: Gambling tables where the nobles bet their fortunes, palace intrigues of the time and an entanglements between two of the musicians of the orchestra, bedroom secrets, love stories in the palace kitchens or the generals of Napoleon III planning one of their next battles.

TRAVIATA was born from the energy and love that was generated around my previous project: The Original Sin, in which film and theater directors, photographers and actor coaches collaborated to get the best out of performers and the dancers who performed for the paintings.

I worked on the dramatic and cinematographic point of view of painting. Different angles of the same scene. I tried to capture the action while it's happening while avoiding the passive attitude of the pose.

The first Traviata Experience took place in Madrid between 2012 and 2014. A team with more than forty people participated: musicians, photographers, a film director, producers, designers, makeup artists, hairdressers, props, light and sound, cameras, actors, journalists!

More than 7,000 photos and hundreds of videos emerged and the narrative began to be built. This gave birth to more than fifty paintings and several derivative works (photos, videos, music...).

All the material that emerged were shared online under Creative Commons licenses so that the community of project supporters could use them and make their own interpretations.

This first part was presented simultaneously in two exhibitions in New York and Madrid.

During 2014 I decided to seek the magic of the South and I traveled with Traviata to Buenos Aires to finish its development in three phases: Masquerade, The Creation and The New Gaze.

I chose this city because during that time it was a vibrant city with one of the most artistic feelings on the planet. In each corner the intention and the desire to create could be breathed. Something similar to what I experienced in Madrid during the 80s.

A MASQUERADE is a party where everyone wears a mask and can play someone else for one night.

In the case of TRAVIATA, it is much more: a participatory and multisensory experience where, throughout a day, all the artists together with the public take part in the preparation and filming of the scenes of the Carnival Party of the Second Act of the opera.

A PARTY WITHIN A PARTY.

The public attends the makeup and wardrobe sessions, set decoration, lighting and camera set up and the entire content creative process while witnessing a great story of love and tragedy. Beautiful garments. Short stories. Music. Sounds. An enveloping and creative act.

Part of Traviata's proposal is to open the artists' work process to the public, making it part of the work of art.

At night the guests begin to arrive. Personalities from the world of culture and the arts, politicians, actors, patrons and opera lovers. They will be asked to come in their best clothes so as not to be out of place on a night where anyone can become an impromptu extra in the background of a scene that can be photographed, filmed or painted.

They are all indirect protagonists of the work, whose final scene, the dance of the gypsies and the bullfighters, will take place among the public, allowing the invited photographers and directors to obtain snapshots and scenes full of people that will later be painted, turning the process of work and the participation of the public in part of the final work.

After the outbreak of the Masquerade, the artists explore and create their works from the material obtained.

Paintings, photographs, short films and fashion films are created. The creators open their ateliers, assembly rooms and studios on the Internet to continue with the participatory and immersive experience.

VISUAL ARTS - THEATER - DANCE - MUSIC - GASTRONOMY

The copyright of the works is opened to allow other artists not invited in the first instance to make their own creations under Creative Commons licenses to broaden the scope of the project and generate new works.

The performances within the festival or the dance of the gypsies and the bullfighters give rise to work with these disciplines and different schools and artistic groups can contribute their own visions. Also with music, through the orchestra that plays during the Masquerade or the soundtracks of the audiovisual works that are created afterwards. Also the gastronomic reinterpretation of the food of that time by prestigious and experimental chefs and much more.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS OF ARTISTS WORKING ON THE SAME ARTWORK

This whole process is filmed. All these disciplines and artists working together but apart, contaminating each other, exploring each other and taking advantage of each other's creations to create new things, is documented in a making-of that talks about the limits of art, of the creative process, of creation itself.

An in-depth look at art, on the different disciplines and their particular characteristics to narrate, move and show.

For the first time, an exhaustive study of what each art implies. A work of art which starts from the same narrative center point, the same story, and evolves into many different views and perspectives.

THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE

The project concludes with a multidisciplinary exhibition of all the material generated that is developed at the center of different disciplines, contaminating channels that go beyond the scope of each one (film festivals, television, theatrical and exhibition spaces or schools).

An immersive exhibition of Painting, Cinema, Opera, Theater, Photography, Dance, Music, Cuisine and Fashion Design centers our attention towards the epicenter: the opera LA TRAVIATA.

In 2017 I returned to Madrid and currently the TRAVIATA PROJECT is on stand-by indefinitely.