Tango operita in two acts

Libretto by Horacio Ferrer

Tickets for every performance of María de Buenos Aires were already sold out weeks before the premiere in January 2024. Now the hit production returns to the Kammeroper with an unchanged cast. Piazzolla’s tango opera was first given in 1968. It is a work at once thought-provoking and intoxicating that highlights social injustices and celebrates life, and is a declaration of love for the tango as well as an indictment of it. María comes from the suburbs of Buenos Aires. A prisoner of the lustful desires of a world dominated by crime and machismo, she becomes a figure onto which the mores of her environment are projected. Revered as a saint, debased as an object, she unerringly goes her own way until, now a successful tango singer, she becomes a victim of femicide. But in Piazzolla’s surreal world she is given a second chance: she can battle her way back into life as a shade. A young production team headed by director Juana Inés Cano Restrepo reopens the “María file” and mercilessly places the knife in society’s wound while also giving space to Piazzolla’s indestructible poetry. Led by mezzo-soprano Luciana Mancini, an ensemble takes to the stage that has many years’ experience of Piazzolla’s sole stage work. The Graz band folksmilch provides a new sound which is as authentic as it is exhilarating.

In Spanish with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up