Tango Double Bill presented by Florida Grand Opera
Saturday, 03/23/2013, 08:00 pm – 11:15 pm
The Stage
170 Northeast 38 Street,
Miami, Florida 33137
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Florida Grand Opera looks to expand the reach of opera with “Unexpected Opera in Unexpected Places.” Designed to bring less-known works to unique venues throughout South Florida in an effort to expose new audiences to opera, with the support of a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its Knights Arts Challenge. The first installment of this new initiative will bring operatic productions to the Midtown neighborhood for the first time with a tango double-bill featuring Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s Tango and Ástor Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, held at the popular Midtown music venue The Stage on March 21-24, 2013.

TANGO
A product of the highly-acclaimed, living American composer Robert Xavier Rodriguez, Tango is a one-act comic concert operetta composed for a single tenor, sung by Young Artist Matthew Newlin, and a chamber ensemble. Designed to present three consecutive scenes without pause, the action follows the protagonist at the height of the tango craze in 1913 as he embodies different characters to convey the varied perceptions of this seductive and polarizing dance.

This work will be sung in English, using the composer’s own translation of the libretto.

MARIA DE BUENOS AIRES
The surreal plot of María de Buenos Aires is filled with elements of magical realism, a Latin American movement that thins the veil between fantasy and reality. This is the tale of ill-fated María, who was said to be born “on a day when God was drunk.” Living in the poor suburbs of Buenos Aires, María is seduced by the sounds of tango, becoming a streetwalker, and falling victim to a tragic death. The audience then follows María’s Shadow as it walks the city’s Underground, which has become her hell.

This work is being presented in a slightly abridged version that runs for 70 minutes and sung in Spanish.