The Pittsburgh-born stage director presents at the Teatro Real his version of the Henry Purcell score with texts from the novel La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies (The White Girl and the Birds without Feet) by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar, and songs and hymns by Purcell with texts by Katherine Phillips, George Herbert, and other authors.
The production, with colourful set designing by Gronk and conducted by Teodor Currentzis leading his ensemble MusicAeterna, gives a voice to the women, both indigenous and colonisers, who were part of the Conquest of the Americas yet never appear in the chronicles and official accounts of the era.
Sellars skilfully adapts the evocative, allegorical world of magic described by the English composer as the perfect framework in which to give full rein to the deepest and most obscure human emotions, all from the female viewpoint which was always ignored.
Semiópera in five acts and a prologue
Music by Henry Purcell
Libretto by John Dryden
Songs and hymns by Henry Purcell, texts by Katherine Philips, George Herbert and other spoken texts extracted from the novel La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies, by Rosario Aguilar
New production of theTeatro Real in coproduction with the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and the English National Opera of London
Chorus and Orchestra of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre (MusicAeterna)
Artistic team
Conductor | Teodor Currentzis
Stage director | Peter Sellars
Set designer | Gronk
Lighting designer | James F. Ingalls
Costume designer | Dunya Ramicova
Choreographer | Christopher Williams
Chorus master | Vitaly Polonsky
Cast
Hunahpu | Vince Yi
Teculihuatzin [Doña Luisa] | Julia Bullock
Don Pedrarias Dávila | Markus Brutscher
Doña Isabel | Nadine Koutcher
Don Pedro de Alvarado | Noah Stewart
Ixbalanqué | Christophe Dumaux
Mayan priest | Luthando Qave
Leonor | Maritxell Carrero
Dioses mayas | Paul Singh, Caitlin Scranton, Takemi Kitamura, Burr Johnson
Tecún Umán | Christopher Williams
Leonor | Celine Peña
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