FULL CARMINA BURANA Ballet Buenos Aires 2024 Laura Pisani, Martín Oro, Alfonso Mujica
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Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Carmina Burana
- Composer: Orff Carl
- Libretto: 24 poems from Carmina Burana Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Recorded: March 27, 2024
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Laura Pisani, Martín Oro, Alfonso Mujica
- Conductor: Carlos Calleja
- Orchestra: Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires
- Chorus: Coro Estable del Teatro Colón, Coro de Niños del Teatro Colón
- Ballet: Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón
- Choreographer: Mauricio Wainrot
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Teatro Colón
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
By Laura Papa
Mauricio Wainrot’s beginnings in dance took place at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires; although when contemplating his vast career it is impossible not to mention his time with the Contemporary Ballet of the San Martín Theater since the beginning of the group. Years later, he was appointed as its Artistic Director, a position he held twice. His career began to project internationally around 1986 and this reason led him to settle outside the country for more than a decade; At that time he made productions for companies in Europe, Canada, the United States and Israel, among many others.
At the beginning of the 90s, within the framework of this period of creation in which Wainrot consolidated his career as a choreographer, he was invited by Robert Denvers, director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, in Belgium, to put on a work. The good reception that the Argentine choreographer’s work had gave rise to successive calls, which resulted in his designation as Guest Permanent Choreographer and in a total of eleven works created for the Ballet of Flanders, among which are The Messiah, The Bird of Fire, The 8 Seasons, The Rite of Spring, Looking Through Glass and Carmina Burana.
It was precisely Robert Denvers who, in 1997, proposed to him to do a choreography with Carl Orff’s score, since he was interested in having a Carmina Burana in the repertoire of his company. Wainrot, accustomed to always choosing his own works, had some reservations because he was not sufficiently convinced by the music, but finally decided to accept the commission.
Carmina Burana is the Latin name given to a collection of goliard songs from the 12th and 13th centuries gathered in a manuscript found in Bavaria, Germany. The compilation presents no thematic or linguistic unity, and is considered the largest and oldest collection of medieval secular poems. The German musician Carl Orff selected some of these texts to compose his homonymous work, a scenic song premiered in 1937.
Faithful to a criterion that he followed in his other works, such as The Messiah for example, Wainrot did not want to choreographically illustrate the content of the poems’ texts. This would have been the equivalent of duplicating through dance what was sung by the voices. Far from this repetitive intention, which aims to stick to the meaning proposed by the texts, what the choreographer sought was to develop something new from the dance itself, using, above all, the rhythms of Orff’s piece. Thus, Wainrot’s version of Carmina Burana shows, above all, images: dynamic, rhythmic, plastic. Images composed of movement in dialogue with music, in which the choreographer’s conception converges with the vision of Carlos Gallardo, who designed the costumes and sets. It is a monumental work, for a large stage, a large production, a large group of dancers (originally it required seventy) and which requires an important display of movement.
The structure of this piece by Wainrot is organized into five scenes, which are arranged cyclically, meaning that the work begins and ends with “Fortuna imperatrix mundi”. The intermediate scenes are “Primo vere”, “In taberna” and “Cour d’Amours”. As a timeless motif, Fortune frames human actions. The poem says that Fortune, like the moon, changes state, waxes and wanes. She spins the wheel of it, eternally, “now it hardens / and then it eases / like a game.” As already mentioned, although Wainrot does not represent the content of the poem, the wheel (circularity) becomes a choreographic motif for the organization of dance and space. For the Fortuna scenes, Gallardo designed skirts for both women and men, which constitute one of the immediately recognizable features and are also linked to the idea of circularity present in the work.
Since its premiere in Belgium, Carmina Burana has been revived in several theaters, both in Buenos Aires and other cities around the world. He also performed at Luna Park and even at the Obelisk. However, the first time it could be seen in our country with choirs, soloists and a live orchestra was only in 2022, at the Bicentennial Theater in San Juan. A few years earlier he had performed with a production of Sodre, with choirs and orchestra, in Uruguay. So, on this occasion, Buenos Aires will be able to appreciate Mauricio Wainrot’s choreographic version of Orff’s cantata with the stable casts of the Teatro Colón coming together.