A New Recording of Piazzolla’s “Tango Opera”

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

First performed at the Sala Planeta in Buenos Aires on May 8, 1968, “María de Buenos Aires” is a tango operita (tango opera) by Astor Piazzolla in which he moved his music-making from the dance hall to a theatrical setting. As a result of the rise in Piazzolla’s popularity, there have been an impressive number of recorded performances of this piece, including one on DVD (which appears to be out of print). This past Friday a new two-CD recording was released by Capriccio with Christopher Sprenger conducting the Beethoven Orchester Bonn along with three vocalists and instrumental soloists basically reproducing the quintet that Piazzolla led for his neuvo tango music.

Calling “María de Buenos Aires” an “opera” (or even an “operetta”) is a bit of a stretch. On the whole there is far more narrating than singing, with each narrator taking on a rich variety of roles in the overall narrative. That narrative is presented as a decidedly surreal plot composed in two parts. The first part introduces the prostitute María and follows her at work up until her death. The second part then follows her “Shadow” in a world-of-the-dead that is not particularly different from Buenos Aires.

Much of the music is there to supplement the narration of this plot, rather than to accompany sung texts or provide highlighting colors to the extensive variety of characters, including a goblin, marionettes controlled by that goblin, construction workers, and a chorus of psychoanalysts presented as a circus act. The instrumentation of Piazzolla’s quintet serves this purpose well; and, on this new recording, the musicians are Lothar Hensel (bandoneon), Mikhail Ovrutsky (violin), Thomas Wise (piano), Christian Kiefer (guitar), and Robert Grondzel (bass). Piazzolla then extended this quintet instrumentation by adding parts for viola, cello, flute, percussion, vibraphone and xylophone, and a second guitar. The new Capriccio recording, however, seems to utilize an arrangement by Pablo Ziegler that incorporates a moderate string ensemble.

From a stylistic point of view, the result has relatively little to do with either opera or operetta. In many respects the overall approach comes closer to the ways in which Bertolt Brecht incorporated a generous amount of music in many of his plays. The closest “family resemblance” might be found in Brecht’s best known collaboration with composer Kurt Weill, The Threepenny Opera. Nevertheless, there is much in this new recording to evoke the spirit of the underlying narrative, even if that narrative is not being enacted before the listener.