Hermes, 9pm, for live spatialized tenor saxophone and video**
Sisyphus, five o’clock, for live spatialized accordion and narrator *
Euridice, seven in the morning, for live spatialized percussion and dancer
* absolute premiere
** premiere of the video version
João Quinteiro · live spatialization/ composition
Henrique Portovedo · tenor saxophone
Sinem Tas · video making
Fernando Brites · accordion
Júlio Mesquita · actor/ narration
Marco Fernandes · percussion
Teresa Doblinger · dancer/ choreography
José Mário Silva · recitation
This project is not an opera. “Depurações para um Regresso” presents three works for live spatialized soloist instrument and performance (video, narration and dance). The three works presented are part of the five pieces for spatialized soloist instrument and performance that make up the universe of the ten satellite works of the opera “REGRESSO”, five works related to characters from the opera (Eurydice, Penelope, Sisyphus, Hermes and Prometheus) and five works that envelop the frames and environments of each character (four Dawns and one Twilight).
All the works in this project have as their starting point the homonymous poems by José Mário Silva, objects that form the basis of the opera's libretto.
Despite the establishment of tangential relationships with the opera, the satellite works are autonomous objects, with a life of their own and thought in a direct relationship with the poems of José Mário. As the libretto is a creative adaptation of the poems, the creation of the satellite works constituted a fundamental part of exploration, deepening and compositional development of intimate sonic relationships with the raw material of the texts, in their original version. The first contact with José Mario's texts took place in 2002, by chance, due to the old habit of turning pages of unknown books, at the Pretexto bookstore, in Viseu. Since then, the potential of dazzling everyday life and the magic of contemplating the infinite in the details of the apparent banality, which José Mário proposes when populating modern Lisbon with mythology, has fed my imagination in the slow process of discovering the characters, the environments and the “RETURN” places. This project is one of the results of that process.
João Quinteiro