In recent decades, every time the operatic genre has had periods of aesthetic inflation, the young generations of creators have looked for loopholes in which to express innovative concerns without giving up collecting the crumbs of the genre.
And when I say recent decades, I am talking about quite a few, practically since the post-World War II period.
Many of these initiatives followed the motto of musical theater: Kagel, Aperghis, Ligeti and a long etcetera were a good example.
And it is a streak that does not disappear no matter how little is said about it.
It's a shame, because there are numerous initiatives that drink from this avant-garde tradition and on which the shadow of the opera distills an inadvisable toxic vapour.
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An introspective Orfeo opens the Madrid opera season
Iñaki Estrada Torío is from San Sebastian with a very solid compositional training, fundamentally French, who seeks expressive spaces that fit into a musical career of exquisite technique, with an emphasis on electronics originally learned at IRCAM in Paris.
In recent years, Estrada has found a formula in which he is comfortable, it could be called radio drama or musical theater focused on radio narrative.
This formula has allowed Estrada to set aside singing as the basic formula for telling stories, and it is not a small thing if that is what bothered him.
Thus, he has already created several shows in which he has found support in stories from classic literature, especially the most intense ones that do not stop shaking if they are well told;
It is the case of
the heart of darkness
, by Conrad, and now the immortal
Moby Dick
, by Melville.
It is an experience of great interest and on which Estrada turns his concerns as a composer: a refined instrumental technique and a use of electronics that, even at the risk of engulfing everything, encompasses the sound mass to the point of making it almost orchestral.
Another of the moments of the representation.
RAFA_MARTIN
Moby-
Dick
that he has presented in the contemporary season of the CNDM, in the magical Auditorium 400 of the Reina Sofía, has summoned a very large audience, a sign that something worthy of attention was announced on the horizon.
He had an artistic complicity of the first order.
In the first place, an instrumental group of authentic luxury, the Ciklus Ensemble, a quintet of specialists in current sonorities in their respective instruments that have become habitual in this country to the joy and surprise of all of us who have missed them for millennia. .
The Ciklus, from San Sebastian like Estrada, is directed by another luxury accomplice, Asier Puga, a sound sentinel of many carats.
So far, we could say that we are facing a Basque reality, and that is that there is a policy of support for this artistic facet that is hardly known in the rest of the country,
But Estrada has brought together more fellow adventurers, for example, the La Ballena Blanca Radiotheatrical Company, made up of six actors who have recorded Melville's story;
and, to make matters worse, the live voice of José Miguel Baena, librettist, theater adapter and narrator, is added to the recorded story.
Six recorded voices and one real one may seem like an eccentricity, but it serves Estrada to make the spoken word something physical and that fits the rough story of those suicidal sailors who fight with the world to get rid of the immortal white whale.
But the sauce that covers everything is the electronics, for which the composer has enlisted the help of the Sonology Department of the Superior Conservatory of Madrid, the neighbors next door to the Reina Sofía Museum.
All this cash has provided a suggestive show, quite sonically saturated, but which, despite the complaints of some, comes as a measure of the power of the history of the ship maddened by the magnetism of the famous Captain Ahab.
In short, a show that shows a degree of artistic restlessness that is much appreciated in these times, which could perhaps be improved in the overall filling of the sound mix, but which subjugates if one is attentive to the elements of the aesthetic challenge posed.
Moby-Dick
Moby Dick, scenic radiogram.
Musical and electronic composition, Iñaki Estrada Torío.
Ciklus Ensemble;
José Miguel Baena, librettist and narrator;
Asier Puga, musical director.
Recording of the text, La Ballena Blanca Radiotheatrical Company.
Cinematographic Foley and musical computer production, Department of Sonology of the Royal Conservatory of Music of Madrid.
Julian Avila, director.
CNDM.
Series 20/21.
Auditorium 400. Reina Sofía Museum.
Madrid.
October 24, 2022.
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