Review | Dark, sexual tango underworld is missing in Hong Kong performance of Maria de Buenos Aires
- Despite some powerful moments, the recent performance of Astor Piazzolla’s opera at Kwai Tsing Theatre felt rather sanitised compared with the original
- The production succeeded most when it came to the music, conducted by Vivian Ip and with outstanding work from Carol Lin and David Quah
Maria de Buenos Aires is the only operita, or tango opera, by Argentina’s Astor Piazzolla – considered the greatest composer of tango music. The theatre piece has been staged in a variety of ways since its premiere in 1968, usually with some element of dance as well as singing.
The piece features long passages of instrumental music and has achieved a certain cult status, but there are considerable difficulties to staging it effectively – largely because of a surrealist libretto by poet and lyricist Horacio Ferrer.
Maria is a woman born under a curse (“on a day when God was drunk”) who moves from the Argentine countryside to Buenos Aires, becomes a prostitute and is murdered.
She returns as a shadow, roams the city and gives birth to a girl who may be her own resurrected self – or the reincarnation of Jesus (Maria de Buenos Aires is peppered with Catholic symbolism).
