María de Buenos Aires

In the organizer's words:

Astor Piazzolla was the king of Argentine tango nuevo. From the 1950s onwards, he combined the old tango from the bars and streets of Buenos Aires with influences from classical and modern music, jazz and pop, and used sharp rhythms, unusual sound combinations and striking chords to create completely new forms of expression that went far beyond the boundaries of pure dance music. The focus always remained on the special character of the bandoneon, originally an instrument from the Rhineland, but which only really became famous through Piazzolla's tangos. When Piazzolla met the poet and journalist Horacio Ferrer, his powerful, poetic language became a new groundbreaking element of Piazzolla's tango. Their most famous joint work is "María de Buenos Aires" from 1968, a "tango operita". Not a tango show, but a poetic musical theater about the myth of the city of Buenos Aires and its people, especially its women.
María embodies the suburbs, passion and love. She is a saint and a symbol of the city of Buenos Aires. María is accompanied by a singer and the narrator "El Duende". Born in the suburbs, she grows up in seven days and goes to the city, where she remains aimless and ungrounded. Her language is the tango. In the underworld of the city, she is condemned to roam forever as a shadow. The road to resurrection is still long and eventful. But she will rise again and again. Piazzolla and Ferrer have written their declaration of love to the city of Buenos Aires, a city of endless facets and constant change, as a surrealistic tango fairy tale. The political dimension of a city characterized by dictatorship and resistance also plays a role. The young Argentinian conductor Natalia Salinas will conduct the music and the production will be staged by choreographer and director Teresa Rotemberg, who was born in Buenos Aires and lives in Switzerland.