Librettist: Paulo Lages
Libretto based on António Patrício’s O Fim
Chamber opera
Date: 2004
Language: Portuguese
Duration: 64 minutes
Small-scale
Queen: soprano
Stranger: actor
3 speakers
In the Old Palace, an old Queen (inspired by D. Maria Pia, and the madness said to have befallen her after the regicide of 1908), consumed by Grief, says she is rocking Death and goes about watering the flowers of a carpet. Outside, foreign squadrons prepare to take the capital of the kingdom (in an exaggerated allusion to the Ultimatum of 1890)—apathetic and bankrupt.
After an apocalyptic night, a Stranger comes to the Palace to report the suicidal resistance of the people and the retreat of the invaders from a city littered with corpses and in ruins. Now the Queen demands to raise herself as a Symbol of the Nation’s resurgence from its own ashes.
Cl | Hn | Pf | Vln | Vc | Cb
Date: 2004
Venue: Centro Cultural de Cascais
Commissioned: Ministry of Culture/Portuguese Institute for Arts and Performance
Stage Director: Paulo Lages
Music Director: Humberto Castanheira
Cast: Margarida Marecos, Guilherme Filipe, Tiago Barbosa, Henrique Félix, Milton Lopes, Manuel Jerónimo, Ângelo Caleira, Francisco Sassetti, Ana Paula Góis, Susana Nogueira and Luís Sousa
