A morte de Luís II da Baviera

In December 2009, I was contacted by João Botelho and Alexandre Oliveira, the producer of the film Filme do Desassossego, with a view to writing an opera based on the text by Bernardo Soares, Marcha Fúnebre para o Rei Luís Segundo (Funeral March for King Ludwig the Second), with a libretto by João himself. Our meeting took place at the end of a cold, foggy afternoon, somewhere in Lisbon. When I glimpsed the figures of João and Alexandre, shrouded in an initiatory mist, I sensed we had a work. João carried the libretto under his arm, and his flaming white hair, oscillating to the four winds, was the herald of an announced work. As he explained the project to me, he smoked thoughtful cigarettes. He carried me along with the great momentum of the passionate young. He assumed I was already familiar with his concepts. His excitement was contagious. I kept saying to him, “slow down, slower,” wait, and he would talk to me of Death, of Providence, of choirs of pages, of kettledrums, brass, and strings; and I would say to him, “slow down, slow down, slower,” but he would talk to me about outdoor filming, about shots, about Caravaggesque games of light and shadow, about tracking shots over the orchestra and over the death scene; and I would say to him, “slow down, slower! But… outdoors? Are you sure?”, and he would talk to me about a staging in the middle of the Sintra forest; and I would say to him slow down, slower!, Outdoors? What? In Sintra? Are you sure? But… and then… the elements? The cold? The rain? The fog?…” and he would say to me, “Yes, yes!… Do you know a more appropriate place for the death scene of Ludwig II? Do you?” And he read to me:

Lord King, Shepherd of the vigils,
Knight-errant of Anguish,
Without glory and without a lady
In the moonlight of the roads,
Lord in the forests,
On the escarpments,
Silent profile with visor lowered

Thus we conspired on the project, wrapped in tobacco and fog. Gradually, Bernardo Soares’s text began to insinuate itself like the purple and gold of Klimt’s Byzantium: 

Behold, from the window of my castle,
Not the moonlight and the sea,
Which are beautiful things and therefore imperfect;
But the vast and maternal night,
The undivided splendour of the deep abyss.

A few days later, the text began to ache within me. Thus the work was born. And there we were, in March 2010, filming, in the middle of the Sintra forest, in the mythical Peninha, flooded with a sharp Picardy sun that pierced the foliage in a thousand hues.