“Extinción: Misa de Batalla y Misa pro defunctis” by Cererols, Wed 13 Apr 2022, From (2022/2022), Directed by Àlex Serrano, Pau Palacios, Conductor Javier Ulises Illán, Teatro de la Abadía, Madrid, Spain

Although most of the catalogue of Benedictine monk Joan Cererols disappeared in the fire at the abbey of Montserrat that was caused by the French troops during the invasion of 1811, his Misa de batalla –composed in 1648 in honour of Phillip IV– and his Missa pro defunctis –composed three years later as the plague ravaged Barcelona– are testimonies of an artistic craft connected to the concertato style and open to the Baroque influence from Italy and Flanders. The scenic proposal Extinción presents a visual dramatization of these works using a staging device of filming in real time: a poetic and visual discourse with this music via a dramaturgy that unfolds with the use of video cameras, models, objects and live performance filming. Extinción is also a reflection about Extractivism in the 21st century: a productive model of development based on the devastation of the ecosystem where some of the most terrible examples can be found in the coltan mines of the Congo, the burning of natural gas from oil drilling in the ecuadorian Amazonía, the mono-crop cultivation of soybean in the Brazilian savanna “Cerrado”, massive mining in Chile and fracking in the Argentine Patagonia.