Persell, Sellars, Vera Pavlova

The first loud opera premiere of the season will be the “Queen of the Indians”, the last, unwritten opera Henry Persella (1695), which is given in the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater at the end of September. The least that is happening in the theater is like the Opera’s release in the Nestoral Russian City. This, however, is also not much like the opera in the capital's Russian city, and for the extra -Russian opera context, this is not the most familiar idea. The performance is a co-product with the English National Opera and the Royal Theater of Madrid, whose quartermaster, the famous pioneer Gerard Mortier, is one of the key figures of the project (it is with him, we recall that the history of another fantastic cooperation is connected-the Parisian-Novosibirsk Macbeta Chernyakov-Kurtsis (2008-2009). Two other main characters are maestro Theodore Krentzis and the legendary American director Peter Selars. For all three Persell, the second joint work after last year's Iolanta/Persephons in Madrid.

A serious work was done on Persella’s opera, she was eliminated from someone else's music, which was added to her after the death of the composer, and complemented by excerpts from his other works. But the most important thing is that Sellars wrote to her a new libretto. In the center of his story is the daughter of the leader of Maya, who is given to the Spanish military leader. We are talking about the times of Conquista. “In our production, we tell the history of the meeting of two cultures not in the generally accepted, familiar context, where the Spaniards are present in armor on horses and Indians of Montesum. We have this story of a woman, the daughter of the leader of Maya, who became the wife of a European - the Spanish commander in chief - and gave birth to children - the first children of a mixed race. These people created our modern world. And the issue of meeting cultures is still today in the era of globalization. ”

The new libretto uses the texts designed for recitation from the novel of the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Agylar “ The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma ("Burnt Chronicles Terra Firma " ), written in The 1980s, after the victory of the revolution in Nicaragua. The translation of the poetess Vera Pavlova and her husband Stephen Seymour were engaged in the translation for Russian credits (the opera will be performed in English). Colta.ru publishes two scenes from the new libretto.

Scene 3 - Wedding of Don Pedro de Alvarado and Donya Luisa, "Queen of Indians"

Donnya Luis
(actress)

I am the closest associate and adviser of my father, leader of Shikoteng. I am smart and beautiful, and my blood is noble.

I am one of the five daughters of leaders, virgins, elect, to become part of a military strategy disguised as hospitality.

This sudden decision will change my fate. I'm scared, I am overcome by anxious expectation ...

We learned about foreigners when they won a crushing victory in the battle of Tabasco. Previously, rumors about their landing in Yukatan reached us, but only now we were really worried. Since then, messengers, cartographers, artists ... scouts, translators have appeared.

They brought images of eleven outlandish ships flying along the waves in the direction of the Sun with seven hundreds of God -like men aboard ... Some of these men had four hooves, like a deer and a tail, but at the same time - a human face; Others were completely covered with something brilliant and hard in appearance ...

They had a weapon shooting fire, like lightning and thunder, powerful and terrible. It is so terrible that their offensive was impossible to stop.

Indian leaders discussed cunning protection plans. But the aliens won the first battle and entered our villages and houses.

Then it was considered necessary to conclude an alliance with God -like soldiers in the war against the Aztecs.

We, five virgins, were elected in order to gain the trust of the invaders, to recognize them as close as possible and decide whether they are gods or mortals.

Subtle strategy. It is impossible to defeat them in the battle. But we, the virgin daughters of the leaders, can give birth to children from powerful strangers.

I should not forget for a minute about my mission: to gradually conquer him, to better recognize him, and what I find out, to convey to my father, the great leader of Shikoten.

When the captain general took my hand from my father’s hand, I felt a heavenly touch, and my heart was filled with fear.

The Captain General told my father, a blind chicoteng, and Tolmach translated: “This is Pedro de Alvarado, my brother and first assistant. Give him Donya Louis. ”

So they gave me a new name. For them, this was a solemn and significant event.

How strange my fate is! I raised my eyes when my hand moved from the hand of the general general into the hand of one of his lieutenants, Don Pedro de Alvarado. It was the most beautiful of his warriors! He was Tonatiu, the son of the Sun, as the Indians of the most brave and strong call.

I agreed to turn into Catholicism, enter the Catholic paradise, abandoning the paradise of my ancestors, their beliefs and customs, getting used to the new name, although my native is more beautiful. "Luis" sounds worse, this word does not mean anything beautiful, and it is difficult to pronounce it. It was not given to me by my parents or fate, he was arbitrarily chosen by a priest, dressed in a dark cassock.

I hid the name given to me at birth in the most secluded cache of my memory.

Choir
Piper with a pipe on Zion

Pipe in a pipe on Zion,
Assign the post
And announce the solemn meeting.
Collect the people, build a meeting,
Invite the elders,
Collect the youths and infants;
May the groom come out of the Chertog
And the bride is from her room.
Between the narthex and the altar
Yes, priests cry, ministers of the Lord,
And they say: “Svy, Lord, your people!
Do not betray your legacy to reproach,
So that the peoples do not mock him!
Why will they say between the peoples:
Where is God? "

Scene 4 - wedding night. "He was my god"

Donnya Luis
(actress)

He accepts my friendship and helpfulness with reluctance and distrust. He is wise. He stands in front of me, naked, without his heavy armor.

He stands in front of me: an orange without a peel, a tree without a bark, a bird without feathers. My brothers and warriors of my father would be glad to see him so vulnerable!

What is more pride and beauty - in his profile or in the profiles of our gods, whose statues I have seen since childhood, in his statues or in the inviolability of ancient pyramids, which rise so close and at the same time so far from me that night?

I become more confident, overcoming his indifference ... I knead him like a potter of clay. I rub it with a sponge of herbs and flowers, silky and aromatic. I stroke his white body, his hands reddened from the sun, like a slave who wants to please the owner.

Little by little, he becomes submissive. He obeys me when I ask him with signs to change the pose, turn on the other side. He, who is considered so irreconcilable! I cannot resist a smile: with my bare hands I caught the most cruel, the most cunning of the opponents ...

I rub him with a sponge. Inhaling the aromas, he involuntarily experiences pleasure, peace, and negligence. Is he God? Yes, for me he is God!

I stroke it with the fingertips; In these minutes, what does it matter, God or mortal?

He rises to his feet. He is so high that I ask him to kneel signs so that I can reach his face. I am pleased to see him on the knees. I caress his beautiful face, always smiling when he sits on his unprecedented beast. I speak to him, I sing him in my tongue, I try to please him. He seems to me a child!

I swell with immense sweetness. Can I stay indifferent to him? His homeland is so far! Can I not sing him the songs of our beautiful poets?

Counterenor
(for Donya Luis)

Sweeter than dew from rose

Sweeter than dew from rose, fresh
Breeze on the shore flowering
You, a kissless kiss!
I'm dying, I'm cold
I flood the burning blunder.
All that is in the universe -
Everything that I see, what I touch,
What I go to, why I wake up,
Everything I remember, everything that I own is
Has become love. And only with her.

Donnya Luis
(actress)

I dance slowly, without embarrassment, with grace and passion, as befits a girl of my class, as my ancestors have done since time immemorial.

Let him know the bliss of love and be forever conquered; Let the essence of it change. I surrender to him slowly, sweetly, in dance, like no other woman, neither in reality, nor in dreams, I could not surrender to him on the other side of the sea.

I am young, but I know what I am doing and why. I give up again and again. Indulging in love, shaking like the earth ... like an open groove ... like a fertile chernozem field, exhaling steam ... Like water in a lagoon, moving the friction of the wind on its surface ... fertilizing and fertilizing.

I am trembling ... Like a throat, like a female in an estrus. All my flesh blissfully meets his movements, fulfilled by strength and masculinity. Is he God? What does it matter ... I am defeated.

All human sensations surpassing in force, our jubilant passion seems divine to me. Merging, we are transferred to the heavenly monastery. To where the gods fertilize mortals, where mortals indulge in love with the gods. Yes, he is from a host of gods. Now I have no doubt about it. I will tell my father.

At heart, I pray that he never leave me so that I can continue his family. What a blessing, what a high goal: to serve the crossing of our race with the race of the gods who arrived from the sea! And I sing in the language of Kiche:

Soprano
(for Donya Luis)

Look, the Empress is night

Look, the Empress is night
With all your yard
Hurrying here to help you
Forget a peaceful dream.

Let the trouble
Need, enmity,
Anxiety, envy, vanity
Leave our shelter.

Let the peace
Night marshmallows,
Roy air dreams
They will find a shelter with us.