The Teatro de la Zarzuela recovers 'Juan José', the marginalized proletarian opera by Pablo Sorozábal | Culture | EUROtoday

In the Spanish theatrical musician world, the livid lament of the masterful creator of The port tavern o The one with the bunch of roses. His everlasting criticism concerning the marginalization of his widespread opera, within the sense of proletarian, the creator would level out, Juan José, lasted till the demise of Pablo Sorozábal in 1988. His opera, his most beloved piece, had been composed between 1968 and 69, and its presumed premiere had been scheduled for 1979 on the Teatro de la Zarzuela. Spain was then not that Franco dictatorship that so bothered the composer from San Sebastián, however the nation had not modified in any respect, the proletarian opera not posed censorship issues, however the elasticity and professionalism that this premiere required had not but been recovered. The creator persevered in a few of his calls for and the then General Director of Music, Jesús Aguirre, later Duke of Alba, erred on the aspect of vanity and a sure cultural elitism, and the issue escalated. Juan José It was not launched and the 9 years that remained of the immortal musician's life have been a string of complaints and self-proclaimed compliments concerning his most beloved work. Sorozábal tells it admirably in an intensive masterful tv interview that has been recovered on YouTube.

Let us level out that Juan José It had been a play after which a novel by Joaquín Dicenta, very profitable in Spain for 4 a long time, virtually from its premiere in 1895 till the tip of the Spanish War. His performances numbered within the a whole bunch, not less than three movies have been made, certainly one of them English, and even in the course of the Franco regime, as occurred with the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship a long time earlier than, his presence was not interrupted. It is curious that such an excessive piece of social denunciation achieved such projection. Be that as it might, the musician Pablo Sorozábal had fallen in love with this piece that responded so appropriately to his progressive, Barojian mentality. In reality, already in 1933, Sorozábal had introduced what could be his first opera, Goodbye to bohemianconcerning the work of the identical title by Pío Baroja, with a business failure so pronounced that Sorozábal's spouse referred to as it Goodbye to the field workplace.

Juan José It remained within the reviled drawer till a musical studying and not using a stage was carried out on the Kursaal in San Sebastián in 2009. That opened the season and in 2016, lastly!, the Teatro de la Zarzuela dared to current it on stage there the place he ought to have been born. The staging that the identical theater now recovers, what else, is mainly the identical, the sober and gloomy stage course of José Carlos Plaza, and the assured musical course of Miguel Ángel Gómez-Martínez on the helm. It is a cheerful revival, eight years have handed, however it’s only the second staging of this important work within the troublesome match of Spanish lyric theater.

But, in brief, what’s culturally and artistically this Juan José? Is it that magnum opera that the creator defended so exhausting? Is it proletarian, and if it have been, does this data contribute something to the permanence of this opera? I’m going to attempt to reply a few of these questions on this pressing evaluation. Juan José It is, actually, an opera, it’s musical theater totally sung and it has the most effective qualities to be thought of a primary piece of our meager operatic panorama.

Sorozábal offers right here with a big drawback, placing prose to music, one thing that zarzuela by no means thought of, and he does it very nicely, with a really excessive share of success, though not international. The purely musical half, linking musical fragments, and so forth., is as masterful as may very well be anticipated from one of many composers greatest endowed with each musical method and inspiration from those that gave the most effective of themselves within the nationwide lyrical style. And but, there stays a certain quantity of issue that can not be ignored.

Juan José It is a black drama, it narrates lives marked by social desolation, the absence of options and the impossibility of managing distress. It is, as José Carlos Plaza signifies within the textual content of this system, a “political complaint”, and one of many harshest expressed within the nationwide sphere. These complaints abound in some that immediately are particularly insupportable, reminiscent of these of exacerbated gender violence, violence each executed and acknowledged, “the woman is false”, “the woman will always deceive you”, in addition to the complete decalogue of A to Z that justifies this violence, “the blows I give you hurt me more than they hurt you”, “without you my life has no meaning”, and so forth., in brief, which broadly responds to the subject of “if that woman is not mine, she will not be anyone's”, perhaps I will even inaugurate it. But those are not all the misfortunes of these people lost in a society that neither looks nor sees what it has in its basement.

It is curious the fashion that was imposed in those first decades of the last century on gender murders, both in theater and opera, which was fed by these sources. There are gender murders in The swallowsfrom Usandizaga, Clownsof Leoncavallo, The tabardby Puccini, or the closest Wozzeckby Alban Berg, and this only quoting from memory and sticking to arguments practically similar to that of Juan José.

But, it is by citing Wozzeck, by Berg, where a counter example arises. The characters in Berg's drama, relatively close in their desolation to that of Juan José, they have a severed sentimentality, a kind of life experience turned into smithereens by the social situation in which they live. And Berg's genius managed to contemplate that, for those situations of social collapse, for those characters who no longer possess anything except that companion whom they have to kill for dispossession, they cannot possess the slightest lyricism either, the soldier Wozzeck is incapable of sing because he is also incapable of understanding himself. Even the music of that founding piece of modernity reflects the absence of conventional harmonic links because these would ruin a negative narrative. Some of this is missed in Sorozábal's robust music. The composer, permanently engaged in a campaign against the weaknesses of what is Spanish, cannot escape the quintessentially Spanish problem of searching for that barely existing Spanish opera so longed for by his generation, and also those before and after. This turns this opera into a piece with historical dysfunctions, a black plot with music of at least various colors and expressions.

Aside from these arguments, which are relevant due to the need to culturally articulate this marginalized piece and, deep down, so good in multiple aspects, but, in the end, so culturally disconnected, that perhaps it is too much to ask of an author already very punished in those sixties, although that was what he defended and proclaimed.

The production of this revival has had a very high-level cast, especially in the leading couple, the baritone Juan Jesús Rodríguez, with an excellent voice and a stage presence that adequately presents this difficult combination of violence and naive tenderness, and, of course , the soprano Saioa Hernández, with good vocal mettle and an acting appropriation adjusted to that moral ambivalence between the suffering woman who can't take it anymore and the one who aspires to a better life at any price. Also very successful are the roles of Vanessa Goikoetxea's Toñuela, the vibrant contralto María Luisa Corbacho, who makes a very credible Isidra, the rich man of the work, Paco, well carried by the tenor Alejandro del Cerro and the main group is closed by Andrés , to Juan José's friend, very well embodied by the baritone Simón Orfila. It is curious that the friends of Wozzeck and Juan José respectively are called Andrés.

Special mention for the orchestra which, in the case of Sorozábal, always has a very demanding role and which resolves it with dedication and efficiency, always with the master hand of Gómez-Martínez.

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