FULL GERALDO & SAMIRA (Amílcar Vasques-Days) Uma Ópera para Évora 2019 Marco Alves dos Santos, Natasa Sibalic, Manuel Gamito

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Geraldo & Samira - Uma Ópera para Évora  
• Composer: Vasques-Days Amílcar  
• Libretto: Helena Nóbrega    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Jardim da Palmeira, Évora, Portugal  
• Recorded: 2019
• Type: Staged Opera Live

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

So much before…

So much later…

This is how the opera Geraldo & Samira begins – in the Prologue by the Eboræ Mvsica Choir with the tutti orchestra – where the different peoples who before us have inhabited this territory where we now live are singing.

The fictionalized history of Geraldo & Samira – an opera for Évora, is situated in the middle of the 12th century, when the threat of the kingdom of Portugal to the Gharb Al-Andalusian was increasing and the arrival of almoravid and almôhada tribes to the south of the Iberian Peninsula was then the first policies of exclusion and intolerance, forcing Jews and Mozarabs to seek refuge in the northern Christian kingdoms.

Then there were very troubled times.

Afonso Henriques, Ibn Arrik Al-Bortuqali, 1st King of Portugal, had already managed to bring the border of the kingdom to the Tagus Valley and transfer his base of operations to Coimbra, where he sought to get the support of the Mozarabs (Iberian Christians who lived under Muslim rule in Al-Andalusian) and make in Alentejo a war of wear and tear that included the fossados with their knights.

Geraldo Geraldes, the main character of the opera, – inhabited a castro in the vicinity of Yabura (Évora) – would be one of those knight-vilains (not a nobleman, but also was not a servant) in the society of the time. For the success of his assaults (cessed) to settlements in Al-Andalusia and the desire to serve D. Afonso Henriques, rejecting the “Andalusian” culture, Geraldo managed to gather a considerable number of Christian followers.

Geraldo Without dread has characteristics – psychological and social – of the anti-hero, and/or a certain charisma through which he obtains the approval of his followers, even practicing illicit acts. Its objectives are considered fair or at least understandable.

Centuries of popular narratives may have helped turn him into a legendary character in the history of Portugal in which the ends justify the means.

Samira, the other main character, is used to living with different people and cultures. In the first scene of the opera, she watches in the alcáçova to a will of music with Christian, Mudéjar and Hebrew singing, at the same time that her maid Yasmina shows the Christian liturgy practiced by the Mozarabs. It is in this opening of behaviours that Geraldo sees an opportunity to take advantage of his relationship with Yasmina and kidnap Samira, daughter of the Yabura Alcaide, then using her as a bargaining chip to take the city.

Quoted from https://portaldaoperaportuguesa.com/opera/geraldo-samira/

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