Fernando Arrabal - Operas

Operas

On February 13, 2009 Arrabal’s opera “Faustbal,” to music by Leonardo Balada will have its world premiere at the Teatro Real de Madrid, staged by the Comediants of Barcelona. Arrabal explains: “Faustbal is a woman who, in the third millennium, is the reincarnation of Alfred Jarry’s Doctor Faustroll, a new doctor Faust who asks God and Lucifer for words and prayers so that love and charity might be unified. Nothing can satisfy the hurricane of her scientific curiosity, nor calm the storms of her desires. A genius, very beautiful, and enriched by her transports and transfigurations, she vows a torrid love for her Amazon. She leaps between galaxies while the war to end all civilization rages, and moves through space at supersonic speed. Confronting her, Margarito, supreme leader of the armed forces, dons the armor of brutal, electronic repression. He is madly in love with Faustbal under the sky’s cupola. He tries to possess her through the torrent of his tower, employing the services of Mephistopheles himself. Jesús López Cobos, music director of the Teatro Real de Madrid, will conduct the world premiere, which will be sung by sopranos Ana Ibarra and María Rodríguez. The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Diaz will sing the role of the Amazon, while tenors Gerhard Siegel and Eduardo Santamaría will be the two Margaritos, bass Stefano Palatchi will perform the role of God, and baritones Tomas Tomasson and Lauri Vasar will be Mephistopheles.”

Four other operas with librettos by Arrabal have been staged, and the author describes them as “always having been as complex, yet suffering from as few complexes, as did Faustroll.” They are as follows:

• Apokaliptica, with music by Milko Kelemen.
• L’opéra de la Bastille, with music by Marcel Landowski.
• Picknick im Felde, with music by Constantinos Stylianou
• Guernica, with music by Ostfiend Busing.

In October 1985, Arrabal made his debut as an opera stage director at the Opéra Royal de Belgique, where he directed Falla’s “La vida breve” and Granados’s “Goyescas.” “Of course,” Arrabal comments, “under my direction the onstage chorus was nude, or to be more precise, panically covered with clay.”

In 1994 Chamber Made Opera produced the opera 'The Two Executioners'. Libretto by Douglas Horton and Music by David Chesworth. It ran for two seasons in Melbourne Australia 1994 and 1996 at the Matlhouse Theatre. "Easily the most impressive and memorable piece of music theatre in 1994..." The Independent Monthly. Australia.