Librettist: Patrícia Portela
Families’ opera
Date: 2021
Language: Portuguese
Duration: 30 minutes
Small-scale
Dove/Goddess: soprano
Peacock/Devil: baritone
Actor
Between heaven and earth, a goddess and birds discuss the future in a celestial council. Opinion is nearly unanimous. It is urgent to exterminate human beings so that everything else may survive. Curiously, the devil is the only one who intercedes for humanity. He understands the reasons that incline it towards evil, pleads for the maintenance of its chimerical condition — half animal, half divine — and accepts its imperfect and decaying state. Failing to carry his arguments through in council, where the majority still votes against the extinction of human beings, Mephistopheles asks the goddess how long it has been since she last set foot on Earth… Faced with her answer, Mephisto leads her to (re)discover those poorly finished creatures she created, hoping to see her fall in love again with those she abandoned long ago.
Fl | Cl | Pf | Perc | Vln | Vc
Date: 2021
Venue: Museu Nogueira da Silva, Braga
Commission: FIO – Festival Informal de Ópera
Stage Director: Sónia Baptista
Music Director: Jan Wierzba
Cast: Ana Maria Pinto, Miguel Maduro Dias and Sinfonietta de Braga