The gastronomic experience will be available from November 5 to 9.
València, November 4, 2025.
The restaurant Contrapunto Les Arts, managed by Gourmet Catering & Eventos, joins the world premiere of the opera Enemy of the People with a menu that translates into flavors the moral, political, and symbolic tension of Francisco Coll’s new work. A culinary proposal that invites guests to taste, from their seats, the ethical dilemmas and human contradictions pulsing through the score.
With this creation, the restaurant becomes part of a historic event — the first-ever world premiere of an opera in the twenty-year history of the Palau de les Arts. The work, composed by Valencian musician Francisco Coll and co-commissioned by Les Arts and Madrid’s Teatro Real, marks a milestone in the Valencian opera house’s programming, celebrating its 20th anniversary with a critical and contemporary look at Ibsen’s legacy.
Ibsen, Coll, and the contemporary leviathan
Based on Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 classic, Enemy of the People revives the conflict between ethics and power, between the common good and uncomfortable truth.
Ibsen’s original play, which exposed the dominance of money over human, moral, and public integrity, inspired the 1973 novel Jaws by American author Peter Benchley — later adapted by Steven Spielberg into the film Jaws (1974). Now, completing a perfect circle, Francisco Coll presents his own monstrous 21st-century leviathan: the dehumanized capitalist we know today as the finance shark.
A three-act menu
To accompany this historic premiere, the Contrapunto Les Arts team has designed a menu that mirrors the journey from purity to moral corruption, playing with contrasts of flavor, texture, and temperature to evoke the duality of the drama.
To begin, an endive salad with blue cheese cream and pickled pear plays with flavors and textures to explore truth and morality. The endive, crisp and slightly bitter, represents the uncomfortable truth, while the creamy blue cheese and pickled pear bring sweetness and acidity — like the moral nuances that complicate every just cause.
The main course, a rich and comforting braised ox stew, symbolizes the strength and stubbornness of the protagonist confronting power. The slowly cooked meat recalls the weight of truth: a struggle that simmers over time until it becomes both irresistible and inevitable.
Finally, a walnut sponge cake with yogurt foam, red fruit coulis, and caramelized sesame blends texture, freshness, and bittersweetness. The sponge and walnuts evoke the earth and the roots — the individual’s honesty — while the coulis and sesame reflect society’s pulse, devouring and being devoured. A harmonious ending that invites reflection.
A culinary experience to celebrate a historic premiere
The menu will be available from November 5 to 9, as an invitation to extend the artistic experience beyond the stage and savor, dish by dish, the intensity of the first world premiere of an opera in the twenty-year history of the Palau de les Arts.