Chilean composer Sebastián Errázuriz premieres his opera “Patagonia” in Frutillar.

Chilean composer Sebastián Errázuriz (Santiago de Chile, 1975) premieres his new chamber opera, Patagonia, today at the Teatro del Lago in the southern Chilean city of Frutillar. The opera will be performed again at the same venue tomorrow, Saturday, and will then move to the Teatro Biobío, where two more performances will be given next Friday and Saturday, March 25th and 26th.

This co-production will feature a cast of three singers, an actor-dancer and an actress, and the Orquesta de Cámara de Valdivia conducted by Rodolfo Fischer in Frutillar and Errázuriz himself in Concepción.

Stage direction is by Argentinian Marcelo Lombardero and the libretto has been written by Rodrigo Ossandón, with whom Errázuriz collaborated on a previous opera, Viento blanco, premiered in 2008 at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile.

Patagonia premieres on the 500th anniversary of the circumnavigation of the planet begun by Ferdinand Magellan and completed, after his death, by Juan Sebastián Elcano. The opera does not deal with the epic aspect of the nautical feat, but focuses on the encounter between the crew and the Aonikkenk or Tehuelche people, native to Patagonia, and the impact the encounter with the Spanish had on this culture. In fact, the opera is bilingual: written in Spanish and in the Tehuelche language. The composer has pointed out that everything that is known about the circumnavigation “is told from Europe. We ask ourselves the question of how the Aonikkenk people experienced it”.

© Photograph downloaded from Sebastián Errázuriz’s website.