Librettist: Mário João Alves
Multimedia chamber opera
Date: 2021
Language: Portuguese
Duration: 90 minutes
Small-scale
Soprano
Tenor
Dancer
Female chorus
Drawing on the words of the poet Yvette Centeno in her poem “Mulher”, I set out in search of this common place: “when the womb is the source / when the womb is the gallows.” These words became music and shaped the genesis of this opera. Other gestures joined this impulse. The search for new sonic elements through which to tell this story, again and again, encountered the abyss and the slowness of Messiaen, in his emblematic work Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.
There emerges a renewed hope that times may change and counter the voracity of our days and of these stories of ours. Messiaen says that, in his work, birds symbolize our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows. There is also the hope that slowness may affect us, and that it may render this time a distant past.
Thousands of women erased. Will there ever be an end to this story?
Cl | Vc | Pf
“Starting from the poem ‘Mulher’ by Yvette Centeno, Lugar Comum explores intimate feminine themes through music. The composer’s sound research found inspiration in the slowness and the abyss of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps, whose birds symbolise the desire for light. The work questions whether there will be an end to the story of thousands of erased women. As the Quarteto Contratempus describes: ‘A common place, which belongs to everyone, with female voices that speak softly of their most intimate screams… The opera has been a long conversation with men who seem unable to hear even their screams.’”1
Date: 2022
Venue: Teatro Rivoli, Porto
Stage Direction: António Durães
Music Direction: Constança Simas
Cast: Teresa Nunes, Miguel Leitão, Leonor Keil, Crispim Luz, Carolina Leite Freitas, Sérgio de A, Ana Rosa Silva, Beatriz Ramos, Natalie Gonçalves and Teresa Queirós
1. Quarteto Contratempus, “Lugar Comum,” Quarteto Contratempus, 2022, https://www.quartetocontratempus.com/portfolio/lugar-comum/.
