La púrpura de la rosa (The Blood of the Rose) (Lima, 1701) was the first opera to be composed and performed in America. The intense and beautifully baroque libretto by Calderón de la Barca retells the classical myth of Venus, Adonis and Mars as a subtle Christian allegory. This production, set in the middle of the baroque church of San Carlo in Modena and featuring students of the Istituto "Orazio Vecchi", imagined a group of peasants and slaves asking their masters permission to celebrate Easter with a mystery play, where reality and fiction, European high-brow poetry and Peruvian folk dances mix. The music of Torrejón was interspersed by several tonadas taken from the extraordinary Codex "Trujillo del Peru", in which Bishop Martínez Compañón faithfully documented the musical life of the country in the eighteenth century, an explosive mix of Andean and African music. This video clip shows the dream of Adonis, in which he foresees his death, killed by the boar, accompanied by the ominous Tonada del Chimo in the extinct Mochica language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxZRDsWa0vM
Calderón de la Barca / Torrejón y Velasco - La púrpura de la rosa
(Modena, Chiesa di San Carlo, December 2009)
Anna Rita Pili (Adonis), Margherita Paoluzzi (Venus), Paolo V. Montanari (Marte), Vittoria Giacobazzi (Amor), Erica Rompianesi (Belona), Giulia Bravi (Dragón), Lorenzo Malagola (Chato), Christina Minò (Celfa), Alberto Imperato (Temor), Laura Barchetti, Maryana Zin, Anna Trotta (choir), Simone Fonso (El Jabalí - The Boar, dancer), Accademia degli Impossibili, Mario Sollazzo (harpsichord & conductor), Anne Juds (choreographer)
The peasants
Venus and the Boar
Love wounds Adonis with his golden dart
The dance of the Boar
Love has won
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