O Desfigurado

O Desfigurado is an opera for symphony orchestra and six soloists. It was commissioned for the 1998 World Exposition in Lisbon but never made it to the stage, for reasons that are not entirely clear. In an interview with Glosas magazine, the composer explains that initially she was told the opera would have to be presented “at the same time as that of [the composer] António Pinho Vargas,” but he had not yet finished his Édipo. As a result, “they couldn’t do mine… then they also told me they had no money…”¹. Pinho Vargas’s opera Édipo premiered at Culturgest in 1996, and the connection to Clotilde Rosa’s work and to Expo’98 is not evident.

The libretto, by the poet Armando Silva Carvalho, largely consists of an adaptation of his fiction book Portuguex (the original title of the opera), which, according to the composer, has peculiar characters, as if by Gil Vicente: the Director, the Impresario, the Worker, the Girl, the Advertiser… and it has very comical phrases that punctuate the action: “Wine must be well wined”, “Women should be plumper!”. In the second act, the Advertiser is thinking, and the Director tells him: “Do it, do it! I told you to make the slogans, you’re the advertiser! Do it, do it! You’re the one who has to have the ideas!”. At the end, there is another character, the Disfigured One, who is like Jesus Christ when he goes through the temple and drives out all those who were wicked, belittling all those people. But the Director wants the money – from this country, of course – and says: “No! I’m the one in charge!”… “In short: the opera was not performed.”²

Clotilde still rehearsed a reduced version for the Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa, but this too was never presented.