"Maria de Buenos Aires" Coming to Cincinnati
Tango, up close and in context, is coming to Cincinnati.
Concert:nova is seeing to that, with some help from their friends.
Cincinnati Opera, concert:nova and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will present “María de Buenos Aires,” a “tango opera” by Astor Piazzolla, July 25 and 27 in the Music Hall Ballroom.
The 1968 “operita,” a 70-minute piece that is “not quite opera, not quite ballet and not quite concert piece,” according to commentator Rafael deAcha, is a kind of metaphor for the tango itself. The surreal story centers on Maria -- a prostitute born in a brothel “one day when God was drunk” – and the daring, defiant, tango-filled life she lives and loses in Buenos Aires. Colombian soprano Catalina Cuervo will sing Maria, with baritone Luis Alejandro Orozco (artist diploma student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) in the opera’s male roles and Colombian actor/director Jairo Cuesta as the narrator Duende (a spoken role).
Dancing is an integral part of the work, which will be fully staged, appropriately enough, in a ballroom. Featured will be Fernanda Ghi and Guillermo Merlo, nationally known tango dancers, in partnership with Tango del Barrio and Patricia Paz Tango in Cincinnati. Jose Maria Condemi, director of Cincinnati Opera’s “Ainadamar” in 2009 and this season’s “La Traviata,” will direct. Musicians from c:n will perform.
C:n gave a happy crowd a taste of Argentina’s greatest cultural export at a “milonga” (tango party) at Edgecliff Point in East Walnut Hills Sunday evening (May 6). Members of c:n performed tango and tango-related music as dancers Patricia Paz and Todd Covalcine glided elegantly across the floor. DeAcha gave listeners an introduction to the tango and to “Maria de Buenos Aires” and its creators, while listeners enjoyed Argentine wine and tapas.
Performing for c:n were oboist Dwight Parry, violinists Anna Reider and Minyoung Baik, violist Heidi Yenney, cellist Theodore Nelson and guitarist Richard Goering.
Reider, Baik, Yenney and Nelson opened with “Wapango” by Cuban composer Paquito d’Rivera, a bracing Afro-Latin dance. The “Fandango” which followed, from Luigi Boccherini’s Guitar Quintet No. 4 (string quartet plus guitar), made a sharp contrast, with its 18th-century Spanish-flavor (imbibed during Boccherini’s many years in Spain at the court of King Charles III). Piazzolla’s popular “Libertango” sounded right out of Iberia with Reider’s sultry violin.
Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, a major influence on Piazzolla, was represented by his lovely “Impresiones de la Puna” for flute and string quartet, with Parry performing oboe in place of the flute. (The piece was intended for the Andean wood flute originally, said deAcha.) It was a beautiful performance, with an arresting cadenza for oboe in the first movement (“Quena”) and Parry scampering all over the place in the “Danza” finale.
Parry and the string quartet closed with Piazzolla’s lush “Oblivion”
before Paz and Covalcine came out to wow the crowd with their intense,
emotional (and totally improvised) dancing.
Guitarist Goering joined Rider, Baik, Nelson and Parry in tangos to
match by Piazzolla, Rosita Melo and Edgardo Donato.
Astor Piazzolla’s “Maria de Buenos Aires” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. July 25 and 27 in the Music Hall Ballroom. Tickets are $35, available through the Cincinnati Opera Box Office at (513) 241-2742, or purchase online at www.cincinnatiopera.org