{"id":187,"date":"2017-10-14T16:06:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T16:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/?p=187"},"modified":"2022-02-28T21:06:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T21:06:06","slug":"opera-an-ironic-approach-to-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/16\/opera-an-ironic-approach-to-tradition\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00d3pera<\/em>, an Ironic Approach to Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabi\u00e1n Escalona*<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nave Cultural Center, Santiago, Chile. \u00d3pera<\/em> (Opera<\/em>) by Ana Luz Ormaz\u00e1bal, after Eliodoro Ortiz de Z\u00e1rate\u2019s Lautaro<\/em>. Music: Jos\u00e9 Manuel Gatica, directing: Ana Luz Ormaz\u00e1bal, set design and costumes: Toro. Cast: Esteban Cerda, Diana Carvajal, Nicole Sazo, Jos\u00e9 Ignacio De Vries, Camila Gonz\u00e1lez, Manoj V. Mathai, Samantha Manzur, Macarena Rozic. Date of the premiere: 19 August 2016.<\/p>\n

\u00d3pera<\/em> is the third project of the Chilean theatre group Antim\u00e9todo, led by director and playwright Ana Luz Ormaz\u00e1bal. Since 2012, the group has created three spectacles, all of them connected by the premise of using the stage more as a space for aesthetic experimentation than as a place to perform a seamless show. In \u00d3pera<\/em>, the company focuses their reflection on a specific question about the Chilean theatrical tradition: what has been the role of opera as an artistic form, within the Chilean culture, in general, and as a scenic art in Chile, specifically? Antim\u00e9todo does that by expanding on some of the resources already used in their two previous shows, Concierto<\/em> (2012) and Agnetha Kurtz Roca Method<\/em> (2015), such as the use of humor; the exploration on the boundaries between sound, words and music; language and multilingualism; the ironic use of titles and images; and an interdisciplinary approach to the scenic creation.<\/p>\n

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Manoj Mathai, Diana Carvajal. Macarena Rozic, Camila Gonzalez, Nicole Sazo, Esteban Cerda, Samantha Manzur. Photo by Nave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Opera\u2014the art form\u2014was first introduced to Latin America in the nineteenth century. During that period, theatre buildings were built in every big city of the continent to receive the sounds coming from Europe, especially from Italy. Along with the libertarian ideas of romanticism, some of the earlier popular Italian composers presented were the romantics Rossini and Verdi. Opera was the entertainment par excellence<\/em> of the creole elite, while the popular taste was later fulfilled with the development of other forms of musical spectacle, such as zarzuelas<\/em> and sainetes<\/em>. Performances of Italian operas were, by the end of the nineteenth century, complemented by local compositions with nationalistic overtones, often using indigenous heroes, idealized in the vein of the noble savage<\/em> as their central motifs.<\/p>\n

In Mexico, Guatemotzin<\/em> (1871), by Aniceto Ortega, revolves around the conquest of Tenochtitlan and the fall of Cuauht\u00e9moc. In Peru, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Valle Riestra composes Ollanta<\/em> (1900), an operatic version of the colonial Quechua drama Ollantay<\/em>. Lautaro<\/em> (1902), the \u201cfirst Chilean opera,\u201d with music and libretto by Eliodoro Ortiz de Z\u00e1rate, also focuses on an indigenous leader who headed a rebellion against the colonial Spanish authorities. Rather than a way of acknowledging the indigenous influence in the\u2014by then\u2014new independent countries, the display of indigenous characters and topics was a recurrent source for enhancing nationalistic discourses against the former Spanish imperial power. In fact, Lautaro<\/em> was staged fewer than twenty years after the end of\u00a0the so-called pacificaci\u00f3n de la Araucan\u00eda<\/em> (Pacification of Araucan\u00eda), a nationalistic military campaign devoted to occupying indigenous territories where the Mapuches lived, creating an ethnic conflict that remains unsolved by Chilean authorities to this day.<\/p>\n

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Manoj Mathai, Esteban Cerda, Mariela Mignot. Photo by Santiago Off<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

World premiered in August 2016, and still performed in theatre festivals today, \u00d3pera<\/em> begins when the audience steps into a bare black box theatre, just to discover eight mannequins hanging from the ceiling, covered by white synthetic leather costumes. The museum-like space, and the absence of seats, invites the audience to walk through the space to inhabit it. Soon after, eight performers show up speaking in different accents, mixing Italian and Spanish, each one telling to the audience members that circles around them, their personal version of the same story: they are the latest generation of the Italian travelling troupe of the Pantanelli family. They are coming back to Chile after one century of absence, to restage Lautaro<\/em>, the first opera composed by a Chilean artist.<\/p>\n

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Jose Ignacio De Vries, Macarena Rozic, Diana Carvajal, Esteban Cerda, Camila Gonzalez, Nicole Sazo, Orlando Alfaro, Mariela Mignot.
Photo by Sof\u00eda Suazo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00d3pera<\/em> builds its fictional narrative over the real theatrical events that occurred in 1902, when the bilingual\u2014Spanish and Italian\u2014lyrical drama Lautaro<\/em> was first staged in Santiago. The play deconstructs the original drama, and as in the original piece, mixes recitative and sung parts, revolving around the events of the conquest of Chile, the arrival of the Spaniards and the revolt of the Mapuches, led by the indigenous leader Lautaro. The play unfolds in the first act by summarizing the whole story, deploying a series of successive tableaux, in the fashion of a nineteenth century melodrama. This particular moment of \u00d3pera<\/em> works as a self-reflecting move in a double sense. First, establishing a dialogue with the aesthetic conventions of romanticism, as they were conceived at the time in which the original piece was produced. Second, by creating a clear rupture with opera as an art form: it is a silent opera.<\/p>\n

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The set, lighting and costumes were designed by Toro. Photo by Nave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This rupture is taken to the next level in a later act, when the performers actually sing in operatic style passages of the 1902\u2019s Lautaro<\/em>. However, the singing is not as technically correct as it could be in the case of real opera singers, because they are actors singing as<\/em> opera singers. As they are not mimicking the technique, but actually using it without fully mastering it, what becomes evident is the vocal training, the use of the technique itself. Another subversion regarding the original piece comes along with the irruption of the big absence in the 1902\u2019s version: the Mapudungun, Mapuche peoples\u2019 language, which, in this version, makes its way between the original Spanish and Italian, just to highlight that the lack of knowledge of indigenous culture among the Chileans remains today pretty much the same way it was over a century ago. In fact, even today, most of the audience is unable to understand a single word told by the actors in Mapudungun.<\/p>\n

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Nicole Sazo, Esteban Cerda, Jos\u00e9 Ignacio De Vries, Manoj Mathai, Macarena Rozic, Diana Carvajal. Photo by Nave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If the problematic relation between Chileans and its indigenous people is at the center of \u00d3pera<\/em>, the Eurocentric cultural project of the creole elite is also a topic addressed in the play. In fact, in the fiction, the Pantanelli family is coming back to the same country in which more than one century ago the company failed to impress the audience in performing Lautaro<\/em>, implying that the Chilean taste was too vulgar back then to appreciate the cultural value of the piece. The Pantanellis are returning with the hope that people in Chile had refined their taste in the span of time since their absence. In this way, \u00d3pera<\/em> poses also a satirical view on the still standing idea of cultural backwardness of Latin America, vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em> the central European cultural production. This premise is also tested in another scene, ironically entitled intermezzo<\/em>, in which the members of the fictional company gather with the actual audience, sharing drinks and talking about politics and culture. This scene also poses an openly satirical comment on the social ritualism of opera\u2019s attendance in Chile.<\/p>\n

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Nicole Sazo, Camila Gonz\u00e1lez and audience. Photo by Nave<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A first approach to \u00d3pera<\/em> could confine the political dimension of the play to the satire it builds regarding opera in Chile, as a quasi-antiquarian art form, as an elitist entertainment, which lacks of the so valued self-reflection of contemporary performing arts. However, the play also poses some other political questions, even more pressing than the former, that regard the contemporary Chilean artistic production. For instance, we could ask, what makes this very performance less an elite art form than the opera? And, even more, what makes us, the contemporary audience members, different from our ancestors of six generations ago, regarding our own lack of knowledge\u2014and to some extent acknowledgment\u2014of indigenous people? In that way, \u00d3pera<\/em> departs from a scenic question, which echoes on several levels, as a criticism of an elitist culture, and its use as a means to create and impose a nationalistic discourse during the nineteenth century. It is also a reflection on the ideological role and the means of production of contemporary theatrical activity, as well as a sharp criticism on the long lasting exotic approach to indigenous cultures in Chile.<\/p>\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n