Ópera do Castelo Edições was created to provide support, memory and dissemination of works produced and/or commissioned by Ópera do Castelo, in the field of opera and vocal music, contributing to the dynamization of the Portuguese operatic market and creation and its dissemination across borders, as well as to the creation of new audiences.
Opera
Lanch 28 de Abril, 18h30
Auditório da Biblioteca Nacional
I’ve mastered dream! I dream what I want. I live what I want”
CD of the opera The Man of Dreams with music and libretto by Portuguese composer António Chagas Rosa, based on the homonymous tale by modernist poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro. Commissioned and produced by Ópera do Castelo, was premiered in 2022 in São Luiz Teatro Municipal, in Lisbon. In a timeless café a man is waiting impatiently for something. A disarming chameleonic person appears and claims of having crossed life’s monotony by being capable of transcend the boundaries of dreams, starting both a journey into these news realities. Is this man a projection, delusion, dream or nightmare?
CD
O Homem dos Sonhos/The Man of Dreams
António Chagas Rosa
Opera in seven scenes
Based on the homonymous tale by Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Jan Wierzba, conductor
Catarina Molder, soprano | homem dos sonhos (man of dreams)
Christian Luján, barítono | narrador
Ensemble MPMP
Lenght: 83’
Booklet: text, bios and libretto PT and EN
15€
Distribution: Artway
Launch 28th April, 18h30
Auditório da Biblioteca Nacional
Redução para canto e piano/vocal score + Libreto PT e EN
O Homem dos Sonhos/The man of dreams
António Chagas Rosa
172 págs.
20€
Operatale
BABAR: a musical challenge to entertain young and old alike.
Let’s imagine the composer Francis Poulenc at the piano, on an afternoon on vacation in the countryside with his family, somewhere in 1940, when a little 4-year-old niece challenges him saying: “Oh, what boring songs.” Placing the Babar album by Jean de Brunhoff on the piano stand, the girl continues: “Go play this first!” Poulenc, amused, begins to improvise based on the images in the book. (…) Little did the little niece and uncle Poulenc know that this game would result in an emblematic work by the composer, due to the absolutely suggestive and contagious power of the poetry and color of his music and the perfect connection with the story, like an authentic soundtrack for a film.
LITTLE THUMB: Bringing opera to younger audiences
The fantastic and terrifying story (like almost all popular children’s tales) of Charles Perrault’s Thumb serves as the motto for the beautiful short story by French composer Isabelle Aboulker, who also wrote the text. This work, already a reference, in introducing lyrical singing and opera to younger audiences, unites in a very effective way and with an extreme economy of resources the story, the spoken word and the lyrical voice, in a luminous music, full of freshness and humor, which quickly enters everyone’s ears.
Isabelle Aboulker (1938)
THE LITTLE THUMB short story by Isabelle Aboulker (1938)
Francis Poulenc (1989-1963)
THE TRUE STORY OF BABAR
Text by Jean de Brunhoff
Portuguese version by Luis Rodrigues
Catarina Molder, narration
Jorge Martins, baritone
Children’s choir of the Opera do Castelo
Francisco Sassetti and Inês Mendes, piano
Duration. 48:25
10€