Astor Piazzolla was the king of Argentinian 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, adding sharp rhythms, unusual sound combinations and striking chords to create entirely new forms of expression that go far beyond the boundaries of pure dance music. The focus was always on the special character of the bandoneon, originally an instrument from the Rhineland, 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 defining element of Piazzolla’s tango. Their most famous collaborative work is “María de Buenos Aires” from 1968, a “Tango-Operita”. Not a tango show, but a poetic musical theatre performance 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 symbol of the city of Buenos Aires. María is accompanied by a male singer and the narrator “El Duende”. Born in the suburbs, she grows up in seven days and goes to the city, but remains aimless and adrift. Her language is the tango. She is condemned to roam the city’s underworld forever as a shadow. The road to resurrection is long and eventful. But she will always rise again.
Piazzolla and Ferrer wrote their declaration of love to the city of Buenos Aires, a city of endless facets and constant change, as a surrealistic tango fairy tale. At the same time, the political dimension of a city characterised by dictatorship and resistance also plays a role. The musical direction will be taken over by the young Argentinian conductor Natalia Salinas, and the production will be staged by the Buenos Aires-born choreographer and director Teresa Rotemberg, who lives in Switzerland.