A gamemal by Don Juan as a symptom of Machist Desmemory | Culture

The premiere of a new Spanish work is always a source of attention. In this case, it is a first in Madrid, since then Don Juan does not exist Saw the light on a Perelada last year. Helena Cánovas accumulates sufficient merits to take the thing seriously, in addition to this work it was the result of the European Mateu Young Artist European prize, received by the Barcelona composer for the creation of this work.

Helena Cánovas fell in love with the obsession of a character, Carmen Díaz de Mendoza, countess of San Luis and, above all, of her mystery, her forgetfulness and the absolute absence of traces of a theatrical piece of operational resonances which, after her premiere, was buried in oblivion. And this is the one that has become the substance of this proposal that reports, together with the composer already mentioned, the playwright Alberto Iglesias for the booklet (do not confuse With the famous film musician with the same name).

Cánovas and Iglesias created an image in two acts, the first is in the 1920s, with the Countess of San Luis and her creative difficulties to perform an anti -macist accusation embodied in the figure of Don Juan, a story inevitably reconstructed or better. The second act is the current moment in which a current creator tries Don GiovanniFrom Mozart.

The idea is very suggestive. Both in her first half, with the Countess of San Luis and the protagonist, and in the second, with a current creator who lives the reconstruction of that moment with an intense fixation. In both moments, the problem is men, two indeterminate male characters who overwhelm the two times of women; In the first half, characterized by the machine; And in the second, micromachist, as he proclaims one of them. In both cases, men are the problem, the noise and the affirmation of a principle of reality that always turns into male supremacy.

This investigation on the problematic nature of an artistic creation for women is very interesting. In the section of the Countess of San Luis this problematicity seems almost consubstantial in the 1920s; But the authors of this creation do not want to put aside those creative difficulties in the hooking for a woman in our time.

Undoubtedly, the climax reaches the end of the piece, when the current woman describes an entire list of remarkable women of those golden years, Zenobia Camprubí, María disturbed, Concha Méndez, Teresa León, María Maeztu, María Rodrigo and enough. They were, together with the Countess of San Luis, founders of the legendary Lyceum Club Women’s, a model institution that was dismantled after the war of Spain to provide the material bases of the phalangian women section. It is perhaps the most exciting moment that read that list of essential women, as if the authors said that the disappearance Carmen Díaz de Mendoza, countess of San Luis, could be reconstructed since its radical forgetfulness of the body of all that generation of gold that Franco has electrocuted.

Helena Cánovas is a young woman, although mature composer. The music that lifts shows an excellent invoice, written for seven tools, string quartet, saxophone and two percussionists, titles of the real theatrical orchestra and admirable by Jhanna Sierralta, a director outside the Venezuelan orchestre system and shows a very remarkable future. In the section of the vocality, Cánovas moves in multiple directions, from the classic recitative, Mozarziano in the first part, to an deployment of resources that we speak of an interesting vocal virtuosity, to this it is an effective electronic effectiveness that shows the voice in the echoes, resonances and melisms. Soprano Montserrat stands out in a first cast.

The staging is responsible for Barbara Lluch, a name that begins to be well known for interesting presences in lyrical productions. With it, a complete female share is covered by this feminist production, composer, director of the orchestra and director of the stage. Lluch’s work is sober and effective, although perhaps a austerity of resources that make this production more abstract than it is.

Together, this Don Juan does not exist It constitutes a admireable investigation into those female ghosts that have a lot of excess Macho pressure and that have blurred our cultural history and, as Cánovas and Iglesias suggest, are still doing it in much thinner ways, but no less harmful.