Ópera Real - Repetição do Fim do Mundo

Act I: A theatre in ruins | Composer: Telmo Marques

1755 – The earthquake destroys the Ópera do Tejo. One of the opera singers desperately searches for his best coat. The musicians and singers arrive to find everything in ruins and come across a band of strolling players stealing the leftover costumes from the wardrobe, especially shoes, to sell, and the scenery canvases to set up their tents. They are led by a matriarch, Mariana da Enxovia, visibly pregnant. The king, who had come incognito for a rendezvous with the opera singer Federica Ricci, stays to assess the damage and promises to build a new theatre on the same spot. Meanwhile, with the effort, Mariana da Enxovia’s waters break. Federica, the prima donna, helps the pregnant woman. Two healthy twins are born. But Mariana dies after childbirth. Federica Ricci keeps one of the children, and one of the strolling players, Donato Paupério, keeps the other.

Act II: A theatre in flames | Composer: Eugênio Amorim

1866 – At the official inauguration of a new opera house, named after Federica Ricci in honour of the great artist of the previous century, a controversy breaks out between republicans and monarchists, much to the dismay of Marianinha, Federica’s great‑granddaughter, who, despite some difficulty because she is pregnant, insisted on performing at the ceremony. Mariano Neto, also a descendant of Federica but through another branch, tries to climb onto the platform and read O Enteado do Diabo (The Devil’s Stepson), a play written by his great‑grandfather. That is when the fire is noticed. The theatre never gets used. In the heat of the action, Marianinha’s waters break, and she gives birth to triplets.

Act III: A decadent cinema? | Composer: Carlos Azevedo

1977 – The revolution brought democracy to Portugal, including to the conservative and Catholic north. At the Cinema São João, the entire Ricci family gathers to attend the premiere of the erotic film directed by João Ricci. Outside, a group of nuns call for a boycott. The family is scandalised to see that the youngest members appear in the film as actors and actresses, and they try to stop the premiere. They soon discover that those young men and women, who coincidentally look very much like them, are not from the Ricci family but from the Paupério family. They then conclude that they are all cousins of one another. The premiere is blessed by the presence of an uncle, a Franciscan friar, preacher of liberation theology and of the law of love above all else.

Act IV: An abandoned theatre | Composer: Dimitris Andrikopoulos

2088 – In a theatre used to shelter war refugees, a couple of clowns, members of Clowns Without Borders, try to entertain the others with the same worn‑out routines as always, when a group of journalists, pushed by the Blue Helmets, and a group of rulers and ambassadors arrive. The women present their complaints, but one of them, Federica, is so angry that she speaks nonsense. She is apparently pregnant, which is hard to believe given her advanced age. The Blue Helmets conclude that she is a bomb and the woman a suicide bomber. And indeed she is. Her offspring explodes, blowing up the original twins and the devil himself. Only the memory of the theatre remains.