(Photo Credit: © Philippe Gisselbrecht)

With the opera house still undergoing renovations, Piazzola and Horatio Ferrer’s opera was performed in Metz from Jan. 16 to 18 at the B.AM. (Boite à Musique) for music lovers and not just opera fans. Like The “Threepenny Opera (Dreigroschenoper),” to which it is similar in its popular character, “Maria de Buenos Aires” breaks with the traditional framework of opera. While “The Threepenny Opera” brings the street to the stage with a story of beggars set to modern music that can nevertheless be sung by everyone, “Maria de Buenos Aires” takes opera to the street by mixing classical music with jazz, milonga, and tango, without shying away from a few arias that have become popular songs.

In addition to the music, the difficulty of this work, which, in addition to opera, is reminiscent of Bach and Telemann cantatas due to its three-voice and orchestra structure—Piazzola was not a student of Nadia Boulanger for nothing—lies in the director’s task of embellishing the weak narrative framework of this long modern poem. “Maria de Buenos Aires” is in fact more a portrait in verse of a woman, allegory of the city of Buenos Aires, than her murder and what follows.

Balancing Genres

As for the music, the orchestra, dressed like tango players on a stage transformed into a Buenos Aires crossroad thanks to Cyrielle Lévêque and Sébastien Houper for the scenography and Christelle Feil for the costumes, is part string quintet, part sextet with flutes, part septet with flute and piano, part jazz ensemble with all these instruments plus electric guitar, and part Argentine ensemble with the addition of a bandoneon. The ensemble, conducted by Victor Rouanet, manages to strike a balance between these genres. Nevertheless, in order to better illustrate this Argentine atmosphere, it would probably have been better if he had not been present on stage.

Director Paul-Émile Fourny overcame the difficulty of illustrating this hidden narrative in a very beautyfull and long poeme by teaming up with dancers under the direction of Laura Lamy and Tristan Robilliard. Dance being the art form closest to music and poetry, for once, the presence of silent characters was not entirely out of place.

For speaking characters, the greatest challenge for singers remains striking a balance between popular and classical styles. Spanish mezzo-soprano Patricia Illera deserves praise for her remarkable feat in maintaining this balance, particularly in her rendition of “Yo soy Maria.” Her dark, powerful, yet supple, velvety voice captivates the listener. The scene with the psychiatrists is also memorable, during which she varies between speaking and singing, and singing and speaking again, without ever straying from the rhythm imposed by the orchestral ensemble.

The choice of a trans singer, although Sam Taskinen‘s voice, – the singer playing all the other characters, from the palyaor to the bird to the psychiatrists, – is flexible enough to be clear and tender when he draws the words from Maria’s shadow, frank and clear when he is the narrator, and almost playful as the psychiatrist, is perhaps a little too cliché. Just as the audience will appreciate Taskinen’s tessitura as narrator, they will appreciate the almost playful frankness of Noah Vannei’s tessitura as the Duende, who advances the poem like a sunny yellow ribbon. In the same way that his borsalino usually covers his face, while his voice illuminates the story, his tone is clear on the cryptic libretto.

It would take pages and pages to explain how Piazzola managed to create a body of work that was both popular and sophisticated, Argentinean and European, universal in a word, but the listener immediately understands that this is part of its charm.