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"Maria of Buenos Aires" returns with the only concert performance in Latvia in 2027!
Astor Piazzolla's operita "Maria de Buenos Aires" won the Grand Music Award in 2024 in the category "Performance of the Year." Now this concert performance, with the same dazzling cast, will be presented on the stage of the Latvian National Opera!
Alongside outstanding Latvian musicians, the performance will feature some of the world's most sought-after performers of Piazzolla's operita. In the role of the Narrator will be Daniel Banilla-Torress, who has embodied this character for more than 25 years and has also directed several "María de Buenos Aires" productions around the world. In the role of Maria, we will hear one of the most brilliant interpreters of this character of all time - the Swedish-Chilean mezzo-soprano Luciana Mancini.
Cast:
Luciana Mancini (LUCIANA MANCINI) – Maria
Daniel Banilla-Torress (DANIEL BANILLA-TORRESS) – El duende (narrator)
DAUMANTS KALNIŅŠ – El payador (singer-songwriter)
Instrumental ensemble under the direction of violinist DANIILS BULAJEVS:
LIGITA SPŪLE – flute
ARTŪRS NOVIKS – bandoneon, accordion
ANDREJS JEGOROVS – piano
REINIS TOMIŅŠ, EDGARS ZAURS – percussion
MIKS AKOTS – guitar
Chamber orchestra DAVINSPIRO CAMERATA
In 1968, Astor Piazzolla and poet Horacio Ferrer dared to create something unprecedented at the time - a fusion of opera and oratorio with tango nuevo in the operita "Maria de Buenos Aires." Initially met with public incomprehension and skepticism, it has now become one of the most frequently performed Spanish-language works in the world.
The plot of the operita takes place in Buenos Aires and reveals the soul of the passionate and dazzling Maria both during her lifetime and after her death, when she returns as a Shadow to the city's dark corners. Like in a restless dream, poetry, tango, tocata and fugue, biblical scenes, existential sorrow and tragedy all merge together.
Maria's fiery, untamed character is also an allegory of the atmosphere of Buenos Aires's slums and of the birth of Argentine tango itself. At the end of the 19th century, a powerful wave of migration began, when more and more migrant workers from Europe arrived in Buenos Aires in search of a better life. Not knowing one another's language, but living closely together in the slums, people found a way to communicate through music and dance. The traditions of Spanish, Cuban, Italian, German, African and other peoples merged together, creating the tango genre, which later conquered hearts and stages around the world.
