Cascade Festival Of Music and Murry Sidlin - Piazzolla: Maria De Buenos Aires (2006)

Given the resurgence of interest in even the obscure corners of Astor Piazzolla's output, the neglect of the "tango-operita" María de Buenos Aires, a work Piazzolla himself considered among his most significant, is hard to understand. Despite such novelties as drunk marionettes and a psychiatrist trio, the opera is rarely staged. It is a bit nonlinear, but no more so than many another opera of the twentieth century, and many of its individual tango numbers are frequently performed. Perhaps it's that the Spanish text, by Uruguayan (not Argentine, as is erroneously stated in the booklet accompanying this release) poet Horacio Ferrer is dense with symbolism, and that much of the opera consists of a group of static speeches, mostly by María; there is little dialogue or action. Sometimes likened to a staged oratorio, the opera is actually closer to a tango song cycle. The opera tells of a woman, María, who embodies the city of Buenos Aires: "I am my town," she sings. "I am my town! María tango, María slum, María night, María fatal passion, María of love, of Buenos Aires, that's me." A narrator, El Duende (The Spirit), also participates in the story. María ventures out into Buenos Aires at night, populated by robbers and prostitutes, and symbolized by the bandoneón, the concertina that is the primary instrument of tango music itself. After she experiences real or spiritual death, her ghost wanders around the city, writes a letter to others in her neighborhood, and encounters the psychoanalysts, who attempt to implant false memories in her mind (a pretty good prediction of future events for a work written in 1968). Is María the Virgin Mary? She gives birth at the opera's end (in a section the persistently punning Piazzolla entitled "Tangus Dei") -- but to another María, not to a son. The opera stands or falls on its María, for the character is something of a vocal abstraction of the abstract spirit of Buenos Aires that Piazzolla so often represented in his instrumental tangos. In this production mounted by the Cascade Festival of Music Chamber Orchestra, the news is mixed. Mezzo soprano Jennifer Hines has the right sound for María, with a dark lower register and a good understanding of how the music depends on passionate singing as a foil for its conceptual notions. She also has a moderate American accent in Spanish, and her tango rhythms seem a little stiff -- perhaps because the orchestra seems to be dutifully reading Piazzolla's rhythms off the page. This live recording benefits from a strong bandoneón player in Jorge "Coco" Trivisonno, but the omission of a text is a major defect. There is a very sketchy plot summary that raises more questions than it answers. The opera's text is not long, and even though the variety of Piazzolla's dramatic tangos comes through for listeners who don't understand it, a crucial dimension is lost. Even middling Spanish speakers will have trouble, for the language is full of puns, complicated images, and South American-specific terms. This recording doesn't do violence to Piazzolla's only dramatic work, but the marketplace remains wide open for a careful, well-cast, imaginative version of María de Buenos Aires.