Green signal for future audiences

No performers like a potted audience, given that appreciation is a key part of the quid pro quo of a musical soirée. But given the peculiar circumstances of 2020, even a planted audience is better than none at all — as even US President Donald Trump might concede after the two-thirds’ empty arena in Tulsa for his election rally earlier this week.

So Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu must be complimented for arranging all 2,292 seats for the season’s first performance — appropriately, Puccini’s Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) concerto — to be filled by plants from a local nursery.

Of course, the concert was also live-streamed to interested human audiences, but there is every reason to believe this unconventional idea will grow on artistes given the ongoing restrictions by many countries on large gatherings in enclosed spaces.


Other activities facing similar constraints should take a leaf from Liceu’s book and branch out instead of throwing in the trowel.

No one determined whether the plants liked the evening’s performance but as research has shown they prefer classical music to pop, they must have been silently rooting for the UceLi Quartet.

Moreover, given that plants can now make music themselves thanks to bio-sonification — the recording of their natural processes as beats and waves — they may turn into professional performers themselves one day.