Maria de Buenos Aires

“In the operetta María de Buenos Aires, the composer Astor Piazzolla and the poet Horacio Ferrer tell the story of the tango, its death and resurrection. By using poetic and musical imagery and scenes the authors draw a parallel between the destiny of Jesus of Nazareth and the destiny of Maria of Buenos Aires.

Let me confess that the very first time I came across the work of Ferrer and Piazzolla I felt in blank despair. There is so much sorrow, so much love, so much tenderness, and passion, and anger, and faith in life that it is impossible to grasp them all at once without exploding, without turning upside down with the soul – outwards, and the flesh – inwards. The more I was getting myself into the process of analyzing the text and music, the more I wrapped myself up into a fog of incomprehension and at the same time painful emotional feeling. I came to the realization that the approach towards this specific work was somehow a little bit more different, but I did not know the road to take my team to. Whatever road I was taking, I always reached an abysm. And I was back to the beginning again and again. And I was faced with reality again and again, and confronted with the nothing…

Until I had a dream one night. Piazzolla’s music was rushing into my senses like black roots weaving into my viscera and tearing them apart, thus dissociating them from me. This was an extremely painful feeling – as if I was dying. And the very moment I understood that I had come to my utmost limit, that there was nothing left in my flesh to be broken into pieces, that there was no more room for any pain, that same black element suddenly broke off everything inside of me and sucked it out. And then new organs started emerging in my body. Clean and white. Just like snow. When I woke up I knew exactly what our road was to unlocking this storm of human love – María de Buenos Aires.

The legacy of these authors is that Art is what keeps us alive, away from the abysm of the way of living. It is the miracle that rescues us from the temptation to turn into the shadows of our own survival. And no matter how much we try to chase it away from ourselves, to deny it, to debase it, and to make it turn into a prostitute, starve, die, it will revive stronger in order to enlighten our life and bring us back to our inner humaneness. Just like Jesus of Nazareth, Maria of Buenos Aires also rises from the abyss of our denial in order for it to liberate us from our own chains…” 

Veselka Kuncheva