Date: 10th-12th and 14th September, 2007
Location: Teatro Pérez Galdós
Organizes and produces: Fundación Pérez Galdós Theater
Premiere of the first great canarian opera
The Opera, although based on events from the fifteenth century, deals with the invasion: a brutal theme and a harsh reality.
An opera in three acts that relates the events that occurred during the occupation of Gran Canaria island by the peninsulares. We face the dichotomy of a totally classical libretto with a contemporary score, the challenge, was served since it had never been represented before and for which we had to be reliable to the libretto and we could not in this case make an adaptation of it. So we could only play within the scenography and try to compact music and libretto. For this we rely on the artifice of chroma in the cinema. Especially the one of the films of the west. Close-up of the actor with backgrounds of the Wild West behind, made us believe that the actor was crossing Missouri, when in fact he was in an old factory rolling the scene.
Taking advantage of this artifice we put in scene three screens one of background and two sides that framed and positioned the different scenic spaces. This visual component gave us the opportunity to move the chorus, the main protagonist of the opera, to all the places where the action unfolded almost instantly. Recreating this way: physical spaces, such as places of memory, spiritual or ritual. Another of the visual characteristics and for all the magic component of the work was to play with some tulles that covered the whole scenic space and to project through them. The images were multiplied by each of the suspended tulles, affecting the actors and passing them through. Thus creating a completely dreamlike space for the episodes of love, magic, and oracles, which corresponded to the main actors. The only foreign character and therefore “invader” was represented by a mirror man, as the modern virtual weapons that reflect their environment are therefore invisible at times and in others multiply in reflexes to make them see that they are much more numerous than They really are. Apart from the very reflection of the powerful light was another of their weapons.
Although the work tries to give a happy ending of harmony between the people we do not stop representing a moment in which the Guanche identity decimated and dishonored disappears forever without leaving only a trace. Leaving all the clothing in white where the peninsular culture would write another stage of the life of the islands.
