The Opera San Antonio production of 'María de Buenos Aires' will transform the Carlos Alvarez Theater into an Argentine tango bar.
, who said she’s closing in on her 100th performance of the role. Cuervo benefited from meeting Ferrer 12 years ago, learning the author’s vision of the María character’s essence.
She asked him, “Who is María?” He answered empathically: “María is tango,” the embodiment of the dance, which arose in the poorer districts of 19th-century Buenos Aires before becoming a popular craze in Argentina and later worldwide. María’s tragic decline and death echo the trajectory of tango, Cuervo said, as the national dance was overtaken in the 1950s and ’60s by rock and roll and kids lost interest in their native culture. In Ferrer’s telling, “María is a prostitute,” she said frankly. “Because he felt that tango was a prostitute to the city of Buenos Aires, it was used and empowered, but then it was thrown to the garbage can.
As audience members will witness up close, however, Piazzolla and Ferrer were aware that tango had the potential to rise again from the shadows, just like María does in the second act. Piazzolla reinvigorated traditional tango by incorporating elements of jazz and classical music, just as Zvulun, August, and Opera San Antonio are expanding audience expectations of opera.
Performances Feb. 10-11 will run 90 minutes inclusive of a brief intermission between acts, relatively brief for opera, August said. “You’re not out super late, you can actually even go have another drink after if you want, in the style of the show,” he said, laughing.
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