She is unique: María Castillo de Lima
The Alternative Stage of the GNO (Greek National Opera) opens the 2024/25 season with the daring contemporary chamber opera Kassandra, by the distinguished Argentine composer Pablo Ortiz and a libretto by the renowned Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco. Kassandra is an international co-production with the Centro de Experimentación of the prestigious Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires that on September 27, 28 and 29, 2024, will meet the Athenian audience at the SNFCC’s GNO Alternative Stage. The transsexual soprano Maria Castillo de Lima, with her unique voice qualities and extraordinary dramatic versatility, will assume the leading role, conducted by Diana Theocharidis and Alexandros Efklidis, with the participation of musicians from the Ergon Ensemble, under the baton of Nicolas Vassiliou.
A month after its world premiere at the Teatro Colon where it caused a sensation, Athens receives this contemporary Opera which in its world premiere has received comforting reviews.” …The legend of Kassandra acquires a new dimension in an exceptional opera, full of emotional force and tension, wrote Diario Clarín, Argentina’s most important newspaper.
Pablo Ortiz and Sergio Blanco define in this Chamber Opera, a Kassandra destined to wander at night through the outskirts of an unnamed city in search of clients.
Through music, it mixes the terrible with the sublime, the profane with the sacred, the contemporary with the ancient and the myth with the present. He also pairs the aesthetics of the playwright with those of the composer, illustrating their work together in the ever-changing interplay of past, present and future.
Though so far apart, these universes are included in the same space, according to the directing concept of Diana Theocharidis and Alexandros Efklidis.
Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco, one of the most fascinating and intriguing voices on the contemporary world theater scene, was inspired by the legend of Kassandra.
In this modern adaptation, the famous heroine of Troy is transformed into a transsexual immigrant.
Feeling foreign in her own body, she tells her story in broken English, expressing her feelings of loneliness, isolation and the desire to be understood.
The play was performed more than thirty times on five continents. It was performed on various stages, from alternative theaters to prestigious stages such as Le Palais des Papes in Avignon, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the National Opera of Greece.
PABLO ORTIZ - THE COMPOSER
The chamber opera Kassandra bears the signature of award-winning Argentine composer Pablo Ortiz. The composer states: “Kassandra sees the future and the past at the same time and lives a present informed by such visions. The music, meanwhile, alludes to different operatic traditions and includes rapping, spoken texts and bel canto singing, in a tour de force that showcases the talent of our diva. My intention was to write a piece accessible to the average opera fan, highlighting the unique qualities of Maria’s voice and her extraordinary dramatic versatility”.
TENOR TO SOPRANO
The operatic role of Kassandra found its perfect embodiment in Argentine transgender soprano Maria Castillo de Lima, a performer with an exceptionally wide vocal range, who forged a musical career for herself. Although she initially sang in the tenor register, she switched to soprano after her gender transition, becoming the first transgender singer to perform as a soprano at the historic Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
Her career is marked by her extraordinary vocal gifts and persistence, which make her a source of inspiration for the transgender community. “I don’t look at the past with pain. I look at it as a time that helped shape the person I am today, both personally and artistically,” she said in a major tribute to her work, which was published in the New York Times.
About literary composition
Sergio Blanco points out:
“My text Kassandra was a true archaeological enterprise, in the sense that from the beginning I tried to unearth the myth to try to understand it.
I have never tried to explain our present from the myth. On the contrary: starting from our time, I have tried to understand this myth that speaks to us in enigmatic terms of love and death, desire, violence, war?
When I started writing this text in Athens, the first question I asked myself while walking through Omonoia Square was: in the dark times we live in today, what better than to give the floor to a foreigner who, from her own clandestinity, uses language with total freedom, without submitting to any linguistic, moral or cultural restriction? This is how I came to give life to this Kassandra, who is no longer a prisoner of one gender or another, but takes her freedom into her own hands. You will see that this Kassandra has no passport, and that allows her to go through any door, including the door of death.
After all, Kassandra is not a prisoner of any era. To listen to Kassandra is to understand that the freedom that defines her is not an ideal to pursue, but a construction that she herself has forged with such beauty.
Just as Flaubert used to say that Madame Bovary was himself, I wish I could say, “Kassandra is me.”
“I don’t look at the past with pain. I look at it as a time that helped shape the person I am today, both personally and artistically.”