A new opera is debuting, based on the graphic novel by Rui Zink and António Jorge Gonçalves, which was awarded Best Book of the Year at the AmadoraBD festival in 1997.
The libretto is by Rui Zink, who has collaborated on other operas with composer Luís Soldado, and the direction is by Linda Valadas. The production also features projections of António Jorge Gonçalves’s original illustrations.
Completing a trilogy that began with “Não há Machado que Corte” (2022) and followed by “O Nosso Amor é… Uma Ópera para Natália de Andrade” (2024), which focused on ridiculed women, Luís Soldado noted, “Now we are speaking about the most anonymous women of all, who are the cleaning ladies.”
“A Arte Suprema” tells the story of Idalina, “an invisible woman who cleans the houses of visible people such as actors, writers, and dancers.”
“The plot shifts between the absurd and the poetic, with a nearly comic incident transforming her, by a ‘very human miracle,’ into a kind of superwoman who ends up saving the world,” the composer shared.
For Luís Soldado, “the biggest challenge was making an opera-BD, something that had never been done in Portugal.”
“I discussed the matter with my musicologist colleagues at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and there is no record of an opera-BD; this was the initial challenge. How do we combine these two arts, the graphic novel with opera, and try to tell the story as well as possible? The rules end up being a bit different, and it’s about trying something new because it’s a new model of operatic presentation,” he explained.
The performance will not be staged in a conventional theater; instead, it will take place in different rooms of the CAC in Torres Vedras, and later, on the 30th at 18:00 and 19:00, in the southern cloister of the National Palace of Mafra.
The audience can choose their viewing position, whether beside the performers or near a light focus, providing “greater intimacy and closeness to the opera.”
The idea of presenting the opera in various rooms emerged because the protagonist, Idalina, is a cleaning lady “who cleans different rooms during the show while the audience follows her.”
Luís Soldado mentioned that they “sought a certain balance and new aesthetics.”
“The opera itself is in some points a more condensed version of the book; in others, we revisited ideas and concepts. António Jorge Gonçalves’s images are projected during much of the opera, but not always, to let the opera have its space and the graphic novel its own,” he explained.
“A Arte Suprema” is a chamber opera for two singers and three musicians, produced by the Companhia de Ópera e Artes Contemporâneas (Arepo), founded in 2019.
The cast includes violinist Mafalda Oliveira, clarinetist Hélia Varanda, accordionist Emanuel Soares, mezzo-soprano Mariana Sousa, and baritone Ricardo Rebelo da Silva, under the musical direction of conductor Rui Pinheiro.
The composer remarked to Lusa that this “was the project with the most experimentation and artistic research, trying to combine two distinct arts, which was facilitated by a smaller artistic team; with an orchestra, it would not have been possible.”
