The show goes on at Madrid´s opera house despite pandemic

MADRID (AP) — No one performing onstage in Spain’s Teatro Real opera house is masked, and that alone looks odd these days amid a pandemic.

And that's even before the second act scene in Antonín Dvořák’s “Rusalka” — about a water nymph who falls in love with a mortal — in which cast members kiss and grope in a feigned, non-socially distanced orgy.

While many of the world's major venues are shut down, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Covent Garden in London and La Scala in Milan, watching a performance at the Teatro Real in Madrid can almost make you forget about the coronavirus.

Located in one of the cities hit hardest by the virus, the Teatro Real is making a herculean effort for the show to go on, investing in safety measures that have allowed it to stage performances — albeit with smaller audiences — since July.

In March and April, soaring infections had Madrid’s hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients. That eased in the summer, but another wave saw cases surge in the city and surrounding region. Authorities now seem to have gained the upper hand, with hospital occupancy rates falling steadily. Overall, Spain's Health Ministry has recorded more than 1.54 million cases and has attributed almost 42,300 deaths to the virus.

"The theater and culture must bet on staying open at all times,” Teatro Real managing director Ignacio García-Belenguer told The Associated Press. “It’s not about going against the flow or trying to be exceptional. ... It’s what we believe we have to do.”

With a yearly budget of 60 million euros ($71 million), Spain’s prime cultural center acknowledges it has the capacity and ability to carry on.

García-Belenguer says its financing from public subsidies, sponsors and ticketing puts Teatro Real in a...