Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
María de Buenos Aires – Tango operita in two parts with lyrics by Horacio Ferrer (1968)
Ce Suarez Paz (soprano), Alberto Maria Munafò (tenor), Gualtiero Scola (narrator)
Cesare Chiacchiaretta (bandoneon), Giovanni Zonno (viooin), Salvatore Russo (electric guitar)
Orchestra della Calabria/Filippo Arlia
rec. 2021, Colonia San Benedetto, Cetraro, Italy
No text or translation
Brilliant Classics 96762 [2 CDs: 90]
Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires, which he called an ‘operita’, a small work, is a strange one. It presents, in a series of seventeen tableaux, the story of Maria, who is a kind of symbol of Buenos Aires, or at least of its seamy side. She is seduced by the bandoneon, which is practically a character in the story, becomes a singer, then a prostitute and dies. That constitutes the first part. In the second, her Shadow wanders through a kind of Hell, again Buenos Aires, but is brought back to life and gives birth to a child, a daughter, also called Maria, who is possibly herself again, doomed to repeat her tragic career.
The libretto is by Horacio Ferrer, a poet and old friend of Piazzolla. It is surrealistic, full of strange imagery, often religious, and needs to be carefully followed. There is a narrator, called El Duende, the goblin, who is a kind of demon and who also takes part in the action in bringing Maria back to life. Maria is both a speaking and a singing role and calls for a singing actor rather than an opera singer. The third principal is a singer who plays a whole range of roles in the different scenes: The Voice of a Payador (an improvising popular singer), a sleepy sparrow, Chief Old Thief, First Psychoanalyst and A Voice on that Sunday. There are also two small choruses, of three voices each, one of men and one of women, who also play a variety of roles, both spoken and sung.
The music is, of course, largely tangos, but any monotony that the continuous use of a particular dance form may suggest is offset by the highly imaginative writing of Piazzolla. His original scoring was for a band of eleven including the solo bandoneon, a solo violin and an electric guitar. However, this performances uses rather larger forces, though retaining the three soloists.
Piazzolla was himself unsure what genre his operita belonged to. Actually, it has affinities to two works by Kurt Weill. With its low life setting and parts for brothel madams and thieves, it resembles The Threepenny Opera, while in its series of tableaux and non-naturalistic scenes it is like The Seven Deadly Sins. Furthermore, its combination of exuberance and melancholy together with a satirical edge is very close to the atmosphere of Weill’s works written with Brecht.
This performance has tremendous vigour and bite. Ce Suarez Paz has just the right kind of singing voice and she also speaks well. Alberto Maria Munafò sings sweetly in all his various roles, while Guatiero Scola is suitably sinister as the narrator, El Duende. The two small choruses do well and the orchestra really grasps the idiom, though I tended to feel that using larger forces rather softened the effect. The recording is good, but there is no text or translation – I was following with the one supplied with Gidon Kremer’s 1998 version, using a band slightly reduced from the original eleven to eight, and which is perhaps rather subtler and less forthright than this version.
There are now several other recordings of Maria de Buenos Aires available. My colleague Richard Hanlon particularly liked the carefully prepared one by Mr McFall’s Chamber (review) which was a Recording of the Month. However, that and the other recordings which are around, are currently available only as downloads. If you want physical product this would be a perfectly satisfactory version – except fotr the absence of text and translation. The cover picture is delightful.
Stephen Barber
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