Live music and cinema. Next Thursday, 17 May, the Campoamor Theatre will host the showing of Fritz Lang's classic Metrópolis (1927) whereas the Oviedo Filarmonía orchestra,conducted by Marzio Conti and placed in the pit of the Theatre, will perform the soundtrack of the film live. The orchestra will play the original score, by Gottfried Huppertz but rebuilt by Berndt Heller, live.

The existing collaboration projects between the University of Oviedo, Oviedo City Council and Oviedo Filarmonía is framed within the program of cultural activities boosted by the Vice-Rector's Office for University Extension and Communication. The film showing will begin at 20 pm and the entrance will be free until the full capacity of the theatre is reached.

The crossover between live cinema and music has demanded hard training on the part of musicians, who have to adjust exactly the tempo of the melody to the film showing. For weeks, the maestro Conti has meticulously studied the length of the classic film in order to blend the music and the images properly.

A World Heritage film, according to the UNESCO

Metrópolis (1927) represents one of the jewels of German Expresionism and a unanimosuly known masterpiece of Fritz Lang's films. The film provided a ground-breaking, modern vision of the themes and structures silent films dealt with in the 1920's. Based on the novel by Thea von Harbou, Lang's wife, the script raises the question of how life would be in a futurist society governed by canons contrary to those of the utopia.

The artistic value, the modernity and the impact that Metrópolis had in the history of films meant its recognition as World Heritage by the UNESCO, turning out into one of the few films being granted that distinction. Other works which have also been awarded this title are, for example, Los olvidados de Luis Buñuel o Lumiére Brothers' documentaries.