Barcelona, you gorgeous and rebellious city, what has happened to you and your stars? At a conference for urban history in Berlin, a speaker remembers the “wild” years in the 1970s, when Spain dared to free itself from the rigidity of Franco’s dictatorship, the counterculture whose illustrious star Ocaña, the artist, rebel and drag queen: Ocaña on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Ocaña in front of the Brandenburg Gate when the Berlinale presented a film about him…his extravagant entrances, his provocative performances until his bizarre death in the flames of a self-designed dress. And we experience his music: the coplas, that passionate Spanish form of Schlager music, which deals with big feelings in the tight corset of everyday life and so much more.

Upon the invitation of Neuköllner Oper, the prize-winning Catalonia writer and director Marc Rosich and his team carry us off for an evening into the world and times of a rebel who numbers amongst the greatest pioneers of a self-determined, queer movement in Europe.

Accompanied by two guitarists, Denis Fischer and Nino Sandow transform themselves into Ocaña, his friend Nazario and others, intoning the song of an open, tolerant and democratic Barcelona, Spain and Europe that today, after years of blood, instability and despair, stands so dramatically at a crossroads.

Marc Rosich is present as a writer and director on all o the major stages in Barcelona, is the artistic director of Òpera de Butxaca i Nova Creació and is active internationally with Calixto Bieto and Carlus Padrissa /La Fura dels Baus, amongst others. He wrote Bazaar Cassandra for the Neuköllner Oper.