By Alejandro Prieto |
Montevideo (EFE).- A succession of tangos and candombes charged with rhythm and with various tributes up their sleeves transforms the life story of “the Black Pearl” into an opera, the nickname by which the popular Afro-Uruguayan singer Lágrima Ríos (1924) was known -2006).
The embracing beating of the drums bequeathed by the Africans who arrived enslaved in present-day Uruguay in the 17th century and the imposing sound of the bandoneon, the essence of tango, are sounds as familiar as they are enjoyed in this River Plate nation.
An opera at pure rhythm
However, as the artistic and musical director of the Uruguayan National Sodre Choir, Esteban Louise, stated in dialogue with EFE, “there are not many precedents” of operas with these rhythms in “a succession of tangos and candombes” like the one that defines “The Black Pearl”.
This is what, according to its musical director, makes this Uruguayan opera based on the music by the composer Beatriz Lockhart and the script by Raúl ‘Ciruja’ Montero, a “very challenging” but also “very beautiful” work to enjoy during your premiere and only performance this Friday at the National Auditorium of Uruguay.
“Music is wonderful. I believe that many of these songs will later remain in the collective imagination as the years go by because it really is a very nice discovery; these tangos, these candombes, the fusion of bandoneon, piano, double bass, string drums, violin with the soloists”, he expresses.
It is that, says Louise, being “an absolute premiere” has both the “challenge” and “meeting the score” to accompany the scenes of what although it can be considered a musical was conceived by Lockhart -died in 2015- , in opera format, with overture and arias.
the black pearl
Born in Durazno, in the center of the country, in 1924, Lida Melba Benavídez joined the trio of the tango composer Alberto Mastra in 1945 and, as she later recounted, they gave her a choice between Harmony or Lágrima, to which she answered the second “because tears are not always sad.
Already in 1972, the tango singer, a genre with a black root, the “tangó”, which, she pointed out in an interview at the age of 76, came to see dancing in the carnivals of her childhood, published the album “La Perla Negra del Tango”, one more milestone in a profuse career now transformed into an opera.
“She is a woman who was in the Caribbean, she was in the United States, she performed at La Sorbonne, in Europe, in Japan, that is, she is a lot and at the same time an Afro woman too, she is very proud,” sums up the actress and interpreter Ángela Álves, who was “very moved” by the proposal to embody her.
“I do not have the ambition of something exact but rather, from me, from my humanity, from my talent both in singing and in acting, dance, putting a little skin on her body”, emphasizes who limits not wanting to “emulate” a lyrical song that others in the cast have.
In a performance in which not only the other singers will sound, Álvaro Godiño, Gerardo Marandino, Stephanie Holm, Alicia Costa and Damián Trinidad, but also the drums of the Valores de Ansina ensemble, even the visual hides a tribute, since the painter Carlos Páez Vilaró (1923-2014), a friend of Ríos, will also be present.
This is highlighted by his daughter Agó Páez, who was in charge of the art direction, set design and costumes with the inspiration of “everything” that Páez Vilaró, known for his carnival scenes, transmitted to him from his life in the tenement -neighborhood- Medio Mundo in Montevideo and in Africa, where he lived for years.
“I was inspired more by symbols and canvas dye colors, something very sober and at the same time very fine, choosing different colors in the palette, dyeing those canvases with symbols referring to an entire ancestral culture,” he notes about the white and black designs. black that will be seen by the spectators in umbrellas or fans.
confront racism
For Álves, playing the character of Ríos, whom she met in person and remembers “as a lady of good treatment and also very flirtatious, with her red nails and her hair always very combed”, implied coming across episodes of discrimination that surprised her in a consecrated star and that, regrets, persist.
“(Racism) is a practice that does not even make sense, it is the product of unreason, because there is no such thing as one person considering themselves superior to another. Why? Why should a person be superior?” reflects the actress, who remarks that “you need to fall deeply into your conscience to have the courage to admit that it exists and then confront it.”
Being able to address it in an opera about “a woman of flesh and blood who fought for her dreams to the end”, she says, is one of the things she is grateful to the ‘Black Pearl’.
“Thanks to her and this tribute I am being able to have the visibility I have (…) and talk about these things”, concludes who hopes that the public will be changed from a work with a “triple tribute”, to Lockhart, Páez Vilaró and Tear Rivers.