FULL OLIMPO (Pastiche) Quito 2009 Marisabel Albuja, Maria Fernanda Argott, Jorge Cassis

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: OPILMPO Opera  
• Composer: various  
• Libretto: Lorenzo Arruga  
• Venue & Opera Company: Teatro Mexico, Quito, Ecuador  
• Recorded: December 18, 2009
• Type: Concert Semi-staged
• Singers: Marisabel Albuja, Maria Fernanda Argott, Jorge Cassis
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra: Alex Alarcon, PIANO  
• Stage Director: Alex Alarcon  
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Archivio Lorenzo Arruga  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
• Subtitles: nosubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

OlimpOpera. A zany operatic piece by Lorenzo Arruga. A posthumous history of singing, commissioned by Maria Elena Mexia, director.
The first version was created for Madrid in the summer of 2008; the second, from 2009, adapts to the different needs of the cultural context of Quito, where Mexia has settled and lives. The key difference is the new character of Guarany, the unsuspecting boy who wants to do theater, wants to make people sing, and to learn, he comes to Olympus, the afterlife, where composers and singers from the history of opera live, gathered in a timeless present. Identified by his local white costume and long braid, the neophyte Guarany is amazed by everything, exults, takes notes, and conquers the happiness of music. It’s a rough draft, created to bring together and publicize the world and heritage of opera and singing. Each revival is different, shifting perspectives, choices, and objectives, depending also on the availability of the singers present. In Madrid, a more sophisticated cultural context, the key role was played by the castrato Farinelli, a character that was erased in Quito, where it became more important to evoke the totality of the opera, to convey the different aesthetic principles, and also to entertain.
It’s a paradoxical invention written by Arruga, an example of his faith in the talent of young students, in this case M. E. Mexia, whom he met at a very young age and immediately collaborated with, a versatile presence, an inventive and practical set designer and director, technically adept, and unbridled exuberance. The entertaining text that Arruga offers her is open-ended and boundless, brimming with characters from opera and song, familiar anecdotes, and unexpected connections, stimulating with real insights played out in a riskily superficial approximation until the charm of the musical piece arrives. But Mexia’s approach to bringing together the world of song, especially from the 19th century, is courageous, resourceful, and respectful of the artists. It has irony in the recognizable make-up of the great composers, linked to the physicality of the local actors who interpret them (like Roberto Sanchez Casar’s Handel or the elderly Monteverdi), sketched out but brushed with character traits such as Bellini’s self-referential elegance, Rossini’s ironic detachment, an overly good-natured Donizetti, Verdi’s dry restraint, Mozart reduced to the laughter of Forman’s film, and Puccini the debater.
For this reason, even if only as an example of experimental paradox, I offer the opportunity to explore the show: it begins slowly, in silence, in the preparation of a universal theater foyer, with the settings of sofas, lounges, tables, instruments, stage sets, and characters who indolently enter, find their seats, and engage in conversation. But there is a rhythm, harking back to the opera’s history, and it unleashes itself in an excited roulette, mad with musical references to the Quito version and clownish gags

(Visited 47 times, 1 visits today)