FULL DEMENTIA (Oscar Strasnoy) Buenos Aires 2026 Florencia Burgardt, Sebastián Angulegui, Daniela Tabernig, Alejandro Spies, Mónica Ferracani

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: DEMENTIA   
• Composer: Strasnoy Oscar   
• Libretto: Ariana Harwicz    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, Argentina  
• Recorded: May 31, 2026
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Florencia Burgardt, Sebastián Angulegui, Daniela Tabernig, Alejandro Spies, Mónica Ferracani, Víctor Torres
• Conductor: Tito Ceccherini  
• Orchestra: Orquesta Estable del Teatro Colón  
• Choreographer: Luciana Acuña  
• Stage Director: Mariano Pensotti  
• Stage Designer: Mariana Tirantte  
• Costume Designer:   
• Lighting Designer: Matías Sendón  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Pedro Anivarro - Artes - Lirismo - T. Colon   
• Date Published: 2026  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, essubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  The opera explores the psychological and physical deterioration of a relationship. It follows a young couple—an aspiring writer and her translator—who move to a country house in France to work on their art. Their creative, romantic life slowly fractures amid jealousy, an elusive police mystery involving a missing maid, and the haunting background noise of a neighbor’s piano.

  The Concept: The narrative portrays the protagonists in three different stages of their lives (ages 25, 50, and 75), utilizing different singers to map out the decay of identity and memory over time

  Synopsis

  First scene:
  A couple settles into a country house in France, an artistic residency where they hope to create their first collaborative work. She is a writer; he, her French translator. Both are around twenty-five years old.

  The house is almost empty: wooden beams, books scattered on the floor, rodent traps, dead flies. From outside, the distant murmurs of neighbors filter in. The young translator reads aloud his wife’s first novel, captivated by her writing. Their future together seems promising, but the initial harmony soon begins to crumble… Gradually, jealousy and writer’s block emerge. The writer distrusts her husband, who teaches French, strolls around the estate, and goes down to the cellar with the maid, a young immigrant woman. The ominous atmosphere is further underscored by the persistent sound of a piano playing in the neighboring house, its music constantly interrupting her writing and provoking heated arguments.

  One afternoon, the writer calls for the maid and discovers she has vanished. Who is responsible? The pianist, her husband, or herself, consumed by jealousy? The writer is unable to create, and the translator has nothing to translate. The piano invades their lives, and the maid’s disappearance becomes an enigma.

  Second scene
  . A car engine is heard. Upstairs, a married couple in their fifties. Soon, both couples notice an unsettling resemblance: gestures, movements, and the timbre of their voices are similar. In reality, they are the same people, at different stages of their own lives, facing each other.

  The dialogue becomes absurd, timeless, as they argue about who they are and what they’ve become, never quite convinced they’re the same people. They drink, go down to the basement in search of clues, and try to solve the mystery of the missing maid. Then the literary rivalry erupts: the older couple has already achieved fame, but the husband reproaches his wife for becoming a writer of popular fiction.

  Third scene
  : Another car arrives; an elderly couple gets out. They are the same protagonists, now in their old age. The two previous couples come to assist them. The elderly couple, their memories ravaged, no longer recognize themselves in the young people, nor in the house, nor do they even understand what country they are in or the time in which they live.

  The mystery of the maid persists. Some accuse the neighboring pianist, secluded in his stone house for four decades; others, the young translator, who perhaps allowed himself to be seduced by the girl and ended her life. Finally, each approaches the pianist in search of answers, but they only hear music: a piece inspired by their story.

  Who made the maid disappear? Brief scenes unfold like in a silent film: fragments of an alleged crime from different perspectives, without the truth ever being revealed.

  Epilogue
  On a foggy morning, the young couple sits hand in hand before the fire. She reads aloud from her new novel, which she has finally finished. She has watched the future unfold before her eyes, a future full of rivalries, promiscuity, and enigmas.

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