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Opera Providence wants to change its audience

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 29, 2006

By Channing Gray

Journal Arts Writer

Katie Viqueira will sing the role of Maria in Maria de Buenos Aires.

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When it comes to opera, Rhode Islanders seem to go in for Verdi and Puccini, anything with high drama and lots of spectacle. But Opera Providence is trying to change all that.

The company is opening its season next weekend with an impressionistic “tango operita” by Argentine Nuevo tango master Astor Piazzolla. Performances of Maria de Buenos Aires are scheduled Friday and Saturday at the Columbus Theatre on Broadway.

“We’re trying to change people’s thoughts about what forms opera can take,” said Opera Providence’s Loriana De Crescenzo. “We find our tried-and-true audience is fascinated by something new.”

This is not the first time Opera Providence has offered something other than La Boheme and Madama Butterfly. Last season, the company staged an evening of zarzuela, a form of Spanish musical theater all but unknown around here.

That was led by the so-called “king of zarzuela,” an Uruguayan-born, New York-based conductor named Pablo Zinger. Now Zinger will be back to conduct next weekend’s Piazzolla opera.

He recalled the other day on the phone from New York how Maria de Buenos Aires was one of the few scores he brought with him when he came to this country. Zinger went on to conduct the opera in New York in 2001, and in Seattle and Europe. He also worked with Piazzolla, who died in 1992.

Here, Zinger will be doing something along the lines of a concert version, without sets and frills. He will be leading a seven-piece ensemble from the piano, with two tango dancers, two singers and a narrator on stage.

The opera will be sung in Spanish (and a form of Spanish slang) with a synopsis provided in the program.

“Piazzolla did it more as an oratorio,” said Zinger, “with the dance being the dramatic element.”

This may seem a little barebones, but then Opera Providence is still getting back on its feet after running into financial problems from several seasons of lavish productions. But De Crescenzo said the performers are all tops in their fields, people like Zinger and Raul Jaurena, the prominent bandoneon, or accordion player.

Tango singer Katie Viqueira, a Buenos Aires native now living in the Boston area, will sing the role of Maria. Viqueira’s latest recording, Amores Torcidos, won the prestigious Independent Music Awards in the world music category.

“We’re still working with limited resources,” said De Crescenzo. “But the quality is there.”

Surreal feel

Maria de Buenos Aires, which premiered in 1968, is the first of several collaborations between Piazzolla and Uruguayan poet Horacio Ferrer, who has given the opera its surreal, dream-like feel.

“There is no linear plot like Carmen,” said Zinger. “It is basically a poem.”

Maria is the personification of the city of Beunos Aires, its dark, seductive nature. She is born “one day when God got drunk,” in a seedy suburb. She leaves for the big city, and is seduced into a life of prostitution by the bandoneon, which represents the city, the tango and male sexuality.

After a life of prostitution, she dies, and in a rite infused with South American voodoo, is condemned to walk the streets of Buenos Aires, wounded by the rays of the sun.

Meanwhile a goblin-poet sends a message of love to Maria’s ghost, who becomes pregnant and gives birth to another Maria, the reincarnation of herself.

The story is told by a non-singing narrator, the sorcerer who impregnates Maria’s ghostThere is also another male voice, this one a singer, who helps tell a tale that can be seen from many points of view.

Suffering and redemption

Written during a turbulent time when Argentina was ruled by military dictatorship, the opera can be interpreted as a socio-political statement about Latin America, as a modern retelling of the story of Christ, or a story of suffering and redemption.

The action alternates between spoken word and tango songs, as the two dancers help act out the story on center stage.

It was Piazzolla’s then-lover, Egle Martin, who came up with the idea for the opera. She was to sing the title role, but she was married to someone else at the time, and parted ways with Piazzolla after the composer asked Martin’s husband if he could marry her.

Opera Providence is not only hoping to introduce its regular followers to a new genre, but to tap the state’s large Hispanic community. About a quarter of the audience for the zarzuela festival was Hispanic, said De Crescenzo.

“With the success of zarzuela,” she said, “we want to cultivate that audience.”

De Crescenzo is also counting on lovers of the dance to turn out. There is, she said, a huge following for the tango itself. The two dancers, Dardo Galletto and Karina Romero, are from New York.

As for the rest of its season, Opera Providence will still be pushing the envelope when it comes to our notions of opera. After a production of Don Pasquale in January, Opera Providence will be headed for the Providence Performing Arts Center for the premiere of local composer Enrico Garzilli’s Michelangelo, a sort of amalgam of grand opera and Broadway, said De Crescenzo. That will feature projections of the artist’s work and an orchestra of 23 musicians from the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

“It’s an important work,” said De Crescenzo. “Enrico is very talented, and it’s gorgeous music.”

Opera Providence performs Maria de Buenos Aires Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Columbus Theatre, 270 Broadway, Providence. Tickets are $15 to $50. Call (401) 331-6060 or visit arttixri.com.