Francisco Coll’s debut evening-length opera Enemigo del pueblo will premiere at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in November 2025 for a run of three performances, followed by four at the Teatro Real in February 2026. The Spanish-language work adapts Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People with a text by Àlex Rigola, who also directs the world premiere production. Click here for cast and dates.
The opera, cast in two acts and lasting around 80 minutes, tells the story of a local Doctor who discovers corruption and malfeasance in a spa town; his revelations have far-reaching personal and political consequences for his family and community.
What attracted you to Ibsen's play as a subject?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I read Ibsen's work and considered the possibility of creating an opera based on An Enemy of the People. Ibsen wrote the play in the last part of the nineteenth century, but the problems it explores remain the same. I can't help but have an undercurrent of social criticism in my work, and I was interested in the fact that An Enemy of the People explores issues such as private interests versus the common good, the manipulation of public opinion, the sheer audacity of ignorance, and so on. It struck me that this story could take place anywhere in our contemporary world, where the interests of capital often come before life itself. Something that interested me—and still interests me—a lot is escaping fanaticism.
How did you turn An Enemy of the People into Enemigo del pueblo?
It is a free adaptation. The work is conceived with the intention of following the original, but with a sense of contemporaneity that makes it easy for any viewer to identify with it. At the same time, I opted for abstraction, not setting it in any specific space or place, or specific time or era. In an abstract way, I attempt delve deeper into all the moral conflicts of the plot through sound; at the same time, in a more concrete was, I describe a series of realistic situations of social criticism. Through the music I have hoped to communicate that there is no wholly positive or negative solution to the problems posed in the play, and that all of the options facing the characters entail one kind of loss or another.
What can audiences expect to hear in your score?
How did you come to collaborate with Àlex Rigola, and what sort of working relationship have you had as composer and librettist? How did you both go about adapting Ibsen's scenario for the operatic stage?
I seem to recall that it was Joan Matabosch, Artistic Director of the Teatro Real, who suggested Àlex Rigola as librettist and stage director. I had a few conversations with Rigola to discuss the way he wanted to produce the opera before he began to work on adapting the libretto himself. He was always open to modifications, even to the point of giving me carte blanche to make them myself—especially in overlapping or dynamic dialogue—as long as it was in service of the music and drama.
You will conduct the opera in Valencia and Madrid. Has your career as a conductor shaped how you approached composing the work?
First, I compose the music I must, making decisions from a purely compositional point of view, and it's only later, when the work is finished, that I look for the technique to conduct it. But I think I've found a good balance between the two activities, though composition is always a priority. Conducting gives me deeper understanding of the repertoire works I perform, which benefits me as a composer – they are complementary activities. The life of a composer can be very lonely, and conducting forces me to get out of the house from time to time and meet other people, which is very beneficial!
Unlike your first stage work, the chamber opera Café Kafka, which was written in English, Enemigo del pueblo is sung in Spanish - a language that is relatively under-represented in the mainstream operatic repertoire. Tell us about that creative choice.
I wanted to experience writing in my own language, and by doing that I've been able to resolve certain expressive problems in more organic and natural way. I've tried to imbue each sung line with logic and beauty. But what I was most concerned about was imbuing each interval with a psychological meaning.
It's a matter of balance, since perhaps one of the problems in opera is turning sonic material into a mere representation of the action – in this respect, the audience stops listening and becomes the same as an audience for regular theatre. Because of this, I try to place the music above all else and let it underpin everything. Then everything is ultimately filtered through the musical material, and despite all the accidents that may occur during the long process, nothing is left to chance. Everything, in the end, is carefully measured and calculated.
I've always done one thing and then its opposite. I think music should provoke opposite feelings, conflicting emotions. In my music there is contrast between the absurd and the sublime, the profound and the subtle. I have always identified with composers who explore a union of opposites, and this manifests in the opera, with its disjunction between the individual and majority, or the common versus private interests.
It is over a decade since the debut of your first stage work, the chamber opera Café Kafka - the intervening years have seen you create numerous large-scale symphonic and orchestral works - the Violin Concerto, Lilith, and Elysian, to name just a few. Has your understanding of opera changed over these years?
While a clear Ligetian influence is evident in Café Kafka, perhaps the direct musical influences in Enemigo del pueblo are less obvious - or at least I wasn't as aware of them. The music I wrote for the opera is the result of all these years of experience composing symphonic, concert, chamber, and choral music. In this way, I've drawn on my own library, so to speak. For this reason some similar things appear in both operas: a grotesque humour, a profound sadness, or an exaggerated expressiveness that can sometimes be painful. Ultimately it's about exposing, as authors like Strindberg, Ionesco, and Georges Perec did, the banality of society through the absurd – it’s the only possible way to delve deeper into the essence of our nature, and to explore, through music, the exquisite logic of our time.
The music of Enemigo del pueblo is no different from my symphonic or chamber music. It's a music of extremes that applies the principles of polarity, gravitation, tension, and relaxation – but all in the service of the dramatic action. In the opera, it reflects the tension between the political and economic understanding of the problem at the heart of the story, as well as the scientific or public health principles in conflict in that society.
Of course, operas I admire have influenced the score. After all, we compose from memory, and I suppose that Berg, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Ligeti, Zimmermann, Benjamin, or Adès, to name just a few, were somewhere in my subconscious while I was composing Enemigo del pueblo. While I was writing it, I had the feeling that the opera a kind of summary of the music I had made up until then. At the same – as happened to me more than a decade ago when I worked on Café Kafka – it has also helped me open other avenues of inquiry.
Enemigo del pueblo will premiere in your hometown of Valencia. What is the significance of mounting the piece there?
Living permanently in Switzerland now means that working in Valencia is very special to me. For several years, I've been developing a close relationship with both the Orquesta de València, where I was composer in residence from 2018-2020, and the Palau de Les Arts. It’s an honour to be the first composer to have an opera commissioned by the Palau des Arts. Presenting Enemigo del pueblo in Valencia gives me the opportunity to share my music with friends and family who might not otherwise be able to hear it; it's always a joy to return to my city, and I hope to continue doing so for many years to come.
Enemigo del pueblo opens at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía on 5 November
