The Fura dels Baus commissioned the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (Tokyo, 1952-2023) the music of the central number of the opening ceremony, that imposing journey of Jason and the Argonauts to the Pillars of Hercules across the Mediterranean Sea. They knew what they were doing Àlex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa: At the dawn of the 90s, Sakamoto was a musician of enormous international popularity, surely less for his status as founder of the seminal Japanese techno-pop band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) who, due to his fruitful work for the soundtracks of films of Oshima, Almodovar or Bertolucciwith whom, precisely, he had won the Oscar for ‘The last Emperor’ in 1988. His cinematic compositions, nourished by jazz, electronics, experimentation and Japanese tradition, provided the Fura show with the ideal dose of sumptuousness, emotional power and delicacy that the solemn occasion required.
Over the past 30 years, the versatile Japanese musician has recorded about twenty solo studio albums and collaborated with a host of international artists like David Sylvian, Alva Noto, Fennesz, Youssou N’Dour, Cesária Evora, Arto Lindsay or Thomas Dolby, expanding their musical language up to an introspective idea of the infinite. Firm activist in favor of ecology and against nuclear power, Sakamoto overcame a throat cancer that he was diagnosed in 2014, although in 2021 he announced that it had reproduced in his colon. “I don’t know how many times I will be able to see the full moon in my life, but in the meantime I want to continue composing until the last moment, like Bach and Debussy did, whom I admire so much,” the artist said last June in an emotional interview with the Japanese literary magazine ‘Shincho’.