‘Patagonia’ installs its own obvious at the Teatro de la Zarzuela

Ideals, affections and emotions meet in ‘Patagonia’, The opera written by the screenwriter Rodrigo Ossandón and the musician Sebastián Erráurizthat these days the Teatro de la Zarzuela program. His arrival in Madrid responds to a trajectory marked by success after the premiere in Chile two years ago and the immediate granting of the prize for the best staging of the circle of art critics of that country and, closer, the Opera XXI Prize of 2023 in the category of best Latin American production. Undoubtedly, everything that surrounds ‘Patagonia’ is important and, perhaps, revealing for the Spanish viewer who, forced by distance, and in spite of the attempts that are made to shorten it, he has a fragile knowledge about the cultural reality of cultural reality Spanish -American. In this sense, the doubt about whether ‘Patagonia’ remains in a faith of your intrinsic values.

‘Patagonia’ was created during pandemic and recounts the meeting of the Aonikkenk or Tehuelche community, indigenous people of South America, with the crew of Magellan. Somewhere has been defined as a “historical thriller with territorial perspective”, which invites you to reflect on several issues. For example, that in ‘Patagonia’ There is very little ‘thriller’ Well, the argument is supported by the simple story of Ikalemen, contemporary Aonikenk woman who tells an ancient history of vexations by the Portuguese navigator, focused on Kentelan’s arrest and death. The story has been transmitted generation after generation and, it is obvious, that it matters, and much, the moral sense of the result. Of course, the political commitment It is a perfectly lawful starting point. Less reasonable is that, in the creative-peristic context self-examinant in which ‘Patagonia’ wants to register, the libretto of Rodrigo Ossandón is a literary process of pedagogical intention so at the ground and that its structure falls into repetition, overlapping The spoken narration of the facts with its naturalist staging.

It is said that one of the great values ​​of ‘Patagonia’ is the being a creative object with the capacity to tune in with the feeling of a community, which theatrically means that it has the capacity to penetrate the spirit of the spectator inviting him to reflection. That is why ‘Patagonia’ advances with a firm step and presents itself regularly in many scenarios spreading a sense of belonging that exalts something as current as the ‘national fact’. It is undoubtedly a fact to take into account even if it is absolutely irrelevant if what is intended (at least so is at this time) is to judge the work in its own materiality.

Then the tiring libretto armor And the accompaniment of a low profile music, skillfully written so that what is said and what is heard, that reduces its parameters to the obvious, mainly in the vocal line, and that, therefore, assumes a simplicity that If the viewer does not lead to the failure of his reading, in exhaustion. ‘Patagonia’ is the Fourth Opera of Sebastián Errázuriza musician versed in diverse adventures, with proximity to the merger understood from a strictly communicative perspective. In ‘Patagonia’ the clarity of the objective is associated with a triviality that ends up becoming a heavy one.