Semi-opera in five acts with prologue by Henry Purcell / New version by Peter Sellars / Text of arias — John Dryden / Monologues from Rosario Aguilar’s novel The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma/ Production designer — Gronk / Production director — Peter Sellars / Music director and conductor of the production — Teodor Currentzis
A co-production by Tchaikovsky Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre (Perm), Teatro Real (Madrid), and English National Opera (London).
The Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre will present the first opera premiere of its 142nd Season on September 25th: Henry Purcell’s The Indian Queen, in a new, revised version directed by Peter Sellars. This is an international co-production between the Tchaikovsky Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre (Perm), Teatro Real (Madrid), and English National Opera (London). Rehearsals started at the beginning of August and are well under way.
Perm audiences will be the first to see the premiere on September 25th, 27th, 28th, 29th and October 1st and 2nd. A series of premiere performances will subsequently take place at the Teatro Real, Madrid in November.
This is the second time Sellars and Currentzis have worked together; their first joint project was a production of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta coupled with Stravinsky’s Persephone at the Teatro Real, Madrid in 2012.
Peter Sellars who is known for ground-breaking interpretations of classic works and Teodor Currentzis have integrated an number of anthems and songs by Purcell into to the unfinished «Indian Queen». In this new version, arias alternate with monologues from «The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma» — a novel about the Conquista by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar –written in the 1980’s during the Nicaraguan revolution.
The focus of the story in «The Indian Queen» is the life of a Mayan tribal chief’s daughter who is taken prisoner by the Spanish general. Her thoughts of revenge gradually give way to love for her captor. And as the Indian Queen gives birth to her husband’s children the Spanish continue to massacre her people. There is nowhere to turn – the Gods are the only hope.
One of the greatest English composers – «British Orpheus» – Henry Purcell created «The Indian queen» in 1695. He died in the same year and never finished the opera, which became the most prominent work of the mature artist. Purcell worked during the Restoration period when theatre, previously banned for decades under thr puritanical, exploded and flourished. This period in the history of England, which started with King Charles II’s coronation in 1600 and lasted till the end of the XVII century, is considered the Golden Age of English Music.
Peter Sellars, director:
«The Indian queen» has always been the opera I felt very deeply; this project I wanted to do for 25 years. It is the final opera of Henry Purcell, he died very young, at 34 years old. We feel this music is very close to the music of the last year of another great composer, Mozart. In this music for The Indian Queen you feel The Magic Flute, you feel the Mozart Requiem, you feel this dark, deep, very sad, very tragic sensibility, but filled with inner light and with a strange hope and so, like the Mozart Requiem, this path from darkness to light but also like The Magic Flute needing to believe in magic.
To recreate an image of Mexican culture in England in 1695 we need to find some special, beautiful sort of images. As we live in such a literal time of CNN and 24 hours news that we take everything so literally, we forget that in the XVII century England this is all poetic, all metaphor. It’s not Peru and Mexico, it’s a metaphor for cultural collision, it’s a metaphor for the meeting of worlds, it’s a metaphor for a divided heart again as well as a divided continent. Purcell’s music always responds to the deep part of the metaphor. We also don’t take anything literally, and Mayan gods returning in the nocturnal dreams of the characters is that the Mayan gods did not leave, they are still there.
The cast for this production combines invited international opera stars and soloists from Perm Opera, the chorus isPerm’s own MusicAeterna. The director emphasizes the fact that the Indian and the Spanish parts will be sung by the same artists, which will enable them to feel the tragedy much deeper.
The set for the opera has been created by Gronk – an artist based inLos Angeles, whose work is influenced by German expressionists, graffiti artists, animated films, and the art of ancient civilisations.
Several famous buildings in the USA, including the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, boast wall paintings by Gronk. Gronk has created sets for Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Latino Theater Company, and East West Players.
The production set design is based on the symbolic colour ornamentation codes of the Mayan tribes and of the Zapatista army — a National Liberation movement founded in Mexico in 1994. They consist of several large backdrops painted in rich, intense colours. In the course of the play the canvases moving which creates the impression that the space is alive and breathing.