By Joana Patacas*, on June 24, 2024
In the current artistic panorama, in which all types of music and sounds proliferate, Alexandre Delgado emerges as a central figure in musical composition and contemporary classical music in Portugal.
Considered one of the most prominent and creative Portuguese composers today, throughout a remarkable career spanning more than four decades, Alexandre Delgado has left a mark of excellence on the country's musical panorama, through a corpus of work that stands out for its creativity and technical mastery.
“ Melody is the queen of music. But if a melody doesn't stick in your ear, if we're not able to hum it or recognize it when we hear it again, it's missing something essential. ” – Alexandre Delgado
He began learning music at the age of 12, when he began his violin studies at the Fundação Musical dos Amigos das Crianças (FMAC). However, it was in composition that his talent blossomed, when he intuitively began to create his own pieces, encouraged by his solfeggio teacher. Even without theoretical training in composition, his first works were performed by his colleagues and one of them was heard by Joly Braga Santos , of whom he became a private composition student.
After completing the general course at the National Conservatory as an external student, he studied composition in France with Jacques Charpentier and graduated in 1990 with the 1st Prize of the Nice Conservatory. His music evolved from an initially very tonal style to a more chromatic and complex language, culminating in writing characterized by the independence of melodic lines and a unique combination between tradition and modernity.
“ When I say classical music, or classical music, I refer to music that transcends the basic and the banal, well-written music, with several layers of content. ” – Alexandre Delgado
The opera O Doido e a Morte , premiered at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in 1994, launched his career. This work, based on Raul Brandão's farce and entirely constructed from a small five-note melodic motif, reflects his principle of organically developing each work from a primordial cell, a practice that Joly Braga Santos inherited from Luís de Freitas Branco and which goes back to Beethoven and is at the roots of the Western scholarly tradition.
Currently, Delgado is at a stage in his career where he composes what he likes, something that is evident in the opera Fortunately Há Luar! , composed between 2023 and 2024. This commission from the Portuguese Philharmonic Orchestra, made as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of April 25th, brought him back to operatic composition, a genre he had not addressed since the opera A Rainha Louca (2009).
In this interview with SMART, conducted by Joana Patacas, Alexandre Delgado talks about the roots of his passion for music, the aesthetics that guide his compositions and the impact he hopes to leave on the music scene.
When did your interest in music begin? Was he destined to be a composer?
I have always loved music, but as a child I had an even greater passion for theater. I wrote the texts, created the sets and costumes, staged the plays and performed them together with my younger brother and some cousins. But music was also always present. In the summer we organized song festivals where I composed all the songs. I would say that learning music came as an afterthought.
How did you begin your musical training?
It was thanks to the pianist Fátima Fraga, my music teacher at Escola Preparatória Marquesa de Alorna, that my life changed and I became a musician. At the time I was 12 years old and I thought it was too late to study music seriously. But Fátima Fraga called my father and told him that it was “a crime” that I wasn’t learning music. Thanks to her, I went to study at the Musical Foundation of Friends of Children (FMAC), a school founded in the 50s by Adriana de Vecchi. My idea was to learn the harp: I loved the Marx brothers' films and it fascinated me to watch Harpo play. But Dona Adriana said: “No, it's the violin you like...” It was lucky, because the harp would have been a lonely and complicated instrument to transport. On the contrary, the violin is very gregarious and, less than a year later, he was already playing in the orchestra with other kids. I was 13 years old when I played my first public concert, at the Aula Magna, playing Purcell. I felt that what I was doing there was an important and stimulating thing. At that moment I knew I wanted to make music for the rest of my life and for the next nine years I studied violin intensely. Then I switched to the viola.
And when did you start composing?
I started composing encouraged by my first solfeggio teacher at FMAC, Dona Deodata Henriques, a fantastic teacher. In the initial test to assess my auditory perception, she, who was very short, played the keys, with her back to the piano, and asked me to identify each note. I got them all right and she said I had exceptional hearing. Then she encouraged me to create melodies at home, which she could use as musical dictations, and that's how I started writing music. This practice quickly evolved. Without any training in composition – it was all very intuitive – I started writing pieces for strings that I then tried out with my colleagues. This process culminated when my orchestra teacher, Leonardo de Barros, proposed including one of them in a concert. This piece, with a sad melody in G minor, with a touch of Sibelius, was played at the Gulbenkian Museum in 1981 and Joly Braga Santos wrote a review that appeared in Diário de Notícias.
How did Joly Braga Santos and Jacques Charpentier come into your life and how did they influence your musical training?
In the Diário de Notícias review, Joly said that my piece had merit, but it denoted the conservative teaching that was given to me; He didn't imagine that I hadn't studied composition with anyone yet. It was at that time that, through Leonardo, he agreed to give me private lessons. I studied with him until 1986. I finished the general course at the Conservatory as an external student and in 1986 I went to study in France with Jacques Charpentier. I would like to emphasize that Gulbenkian did not award me a scholarship and recommended that I first attend Emmanuel Nunes' courses; When I read this, I swore I would never do it. I went to France thanks to the Portuguese State, which gave me a scholarship through the State Secretariat for Culture. Joly and Charpentier were two great masters and they both made a huge impression on me. Joly followed Luís de Freitas Branco's method, which was to start with counterpoint and not harmony, contrary to what was the practice in official teaching. He was little given to absolute rules, preferring to give examples of the music of great composers, using his huge collection of scores. Charpentier helped me expand my horizons. He was a generous man, endowed with a great sense of humor and a vast culture. Unlike Emmanuel Nunes, who created little musical clones of himself, Charpentier encouraged us to find our own voice.
What were your musical influences?
I can start by saying which one it definitely wasn't: the whole atonal school, which I always hated. This tendency, which in the first half of the 20th century was a minority, after the Second World War became dominant and tonal composers began to be seen as marginal. There was enormous pressure for all composers to adhere to atonality and this lasted for decades; Not even Stravinsky could resist. Today, the idea that one could only compose atonal music seems an aberration. Over time, it became clear that the fundamental principles of music are tonal, whatever you want to call them. Here in Portugal, trends arrive late and take longer to disappear. When the world was already rejecting the atonal avant-garde, here we had fervent defenders in key positions, which unnecessarily prolonged that phase. It was incredible how so much money was spent — millions, in the case of Gulbenkian — subsidizing music that most music lovers and musicians considered unbearable. Fortunately, we are now in a less fundamentalist era: contemporary creation is recovering — slowly — some of the role it once had in the past and which it completely lost to pop, rock and other music that the culture sections of newspapers and newspapers television today privileges. Before — I still belong to that time — it was thought that “erudite” music was the one that deserved attention from the media; If this stopped happening, it was also largely the fault of the atonal European avant-garde, which after the war was massively financed, ironically, by the Marshall Plan. Fortunately, many years have passed and the dust has started to settle. Joly Braga Santos, my teacher, who after April 25th was looked at askance due to aesthetic and ideological prejudices, is today unanimously considered one of the greatest Portuguese composers of all time.
Has this resistance influenced your style or musical approach in any way?
Before, I was a little embarrassed to say that I was a composer, because people assumed that I wrote “contemporary” music, that is, experimental and horrendous music. It took me a while to free myself from that anathema. Until a certain point, I felt obliged to compose a type of music that wasn't really mine. This had the positive side of enriching my language and in this regard, contact with Charpentier was fundamental: he pointed out multiple directions, led us to explore all musical parameters: pitch, rhythm, timbre, dynamics. It made me create richer, more contrapuntal works, with more voices, more timbres, more rhythmic diversity, less focused on harmony. Although today I still have a very harmonious conception of music — which I already had even before I started studying with Joly — I understand that the greatest wealth of music is the polyphony, the counterpoint, the independence of the voices. Without this, the music becomes superficial, very basic. Or merely naïve, or primitive.
What are your favorite musical styles?
I like the most varied styles within the so-called “classical” music, from the 15th to the 20th century. I find the term “erudite” music very pompous, I prefer to call it “classical” music, as the late António Cartaxo said. When I say classical music, or classical music, I mean music that transcends the basic and the banal, well-written music with several layers of content. When music only has one layer, it easily wears out and becomes uninteresting. That said, I really like musicals and operettas. I like good light music songs. I like Zeca Afonso and especially bossa nova, which is the best popular music I know. I also like songs from the golden period of radio and their rare current equivalents, like Luísa Sobral's song that won Eurovision. I take this opportunity to add what I like least. Atonal music is at the top of the list, but I also can't stand listening to pimba music, nor rock. Jazz tires me, as does minimal music, which fortunately has gone out of fashion. Classical music is the only one that I can never get enough of. But I can't listen to it in large quantities: I have the professional addiction of not being able to listen to music without paying attention. That's why I hate ambient music.
Are you a better composer because you were an instrumentalist?
I think so. In fact, I never stopped being an instrumentalist, although I no longer play viola as often since I left the Moscow Piano Quartet, an extremely professional chamber group with which I played for fifteen years, until 2021. It was a very intense and demanding period as instrumentalist, which consumed a large part of my time and energy. Bowed instruments require a very high level of dedication. To have true quality, in terms of sound, tuning and bow control, you need to study every day. I dedicated many years of my life to the viola, now I prefer to focus more on composition. I have just spent nine months composing an opera on an exclusive basis, seven days a week, from morning to night: it was a period of unprecedented intensity. But it's when I'm composing that I feel completely happy.
Do you still enjoy composing on your grandmother’s farm?
I love it, it's a wonderful place. I have the piano there that belonged to Luís de Freitas Branco, which I inherited from Nuno Barreiros and Maria Helena Freitas. But as I no longer compose only in the summer, most of the time I compose in Lisbon and also in a small house that Salmo and I have in Trafaria.
And you still don't compose on the piano, as you did a few years ago?
I got over that a long time ago; I currently love composing on the piano. About five years ago I started using an electric Yamaha, which is ideal because it allows me to compose at any time of the day. It also allows me to record and overlay lines that I'm not able to play simultaneously, which helps me do more and better counterpoint. The person who told me not to use the piano was Charpentier, because when I arrived in France I had a too harmonious conception of music. I continue to love functional, sensual, expressive harmonies, but that's not enough, something more is needed. Charpentier's advice was very helpful. The best example of my phase of composing without the piano was the opera “O Doido ea Morte”, which I composed in 1993. It is an ultra-polyphonic work, with lines so independent that it is impossible to play them simultaneously on a piano. Each line corresponds to an instrument or an independent voice, it is the opposite of piano music or writing on the piano. Even today I think it's one of the best things I've done and reflects exactly who I was at that time. It was a culmination, but also a turning point. Today I am a different composer, I write a different type of music that I identify with even more.
How did your career evolve after composing this opera?
“Doido e a Morte” followed the “Quarteto para Bassos”, “Antagonia” for cello, “Langará” for clarinet and “The Panic Flirt” for flute, four pieces that I wrote in the early 90s and that They helped me find my own language. It was from them that the opera emerged, like a summary. Afterwards, I spent some time not knowing what I should do next, because of the expectations created by the success of the opera, which was also performed in Germany and twice in Brazil, and has had 12 productions since 1994. I discovered the path with works such as the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, the “Poema de Deus e do Diabo” and above all “A Rainha Louca”, which took me four years to compose and is the second opera in a planned “Trilogy of Madness”. In this opera I went back to the 18th century, a time that I love. It was healthy for me, it helped me get closer to the type of music I always wanted to make.
Do you have a favorite work?
If I had to choose one among all my works, I would say it is the cantata “O Pequeno Fir”. I wrote it in 2016 for the students of the Musical Academy of Friends of Children, the former FMAC. I was then a teacher at the orchestra and directed the premiere at Tivoli, with two hundred children on stage. It's based on Andersen's short story, a story that makes me cry every time I read it. It tells the story of the little fir tree that lives impatiently for a bright future, doesn't appreciate the forest and only thinks about growing, until one day it is cut down, taken to the city and decorated like a Christmas tree. It is then kept in the attic, where the mice jump with joy upon hearing its stories. In the spring, they drag him to the garden and he thinks he will finally be happy. It is then that he notices that its branches are dry and yellow. It is burned in a bonfire and each crack of the wood corresponds to one of your memories. It is a metaphor for life, for our tendency to take for granted what we have, to always remember the past or long for the future, without enjoying the present. The final verses summarize what, for me, is the function of art: “The open one said goodbye / without enjoying the present / but with his story / he lives forever.”
And what do you like most about music?
I like music that moves me and captivates me. The first film I saw in my life was “The Sound of Music”, I was four years old and I was ecstatic. I don't know how many times I've rewatched it, it's a film that still makes me cry and laugh today, I know all the songs and lines by heart. Equally remarkable was the ballet “Nutcracker”, which I saw in the newly opened Gulbenkian Auditorium. It was the first show I saw live and it's music that gives me goosebumps from head to toe, one of the things I love most in the world, with absolutely brilliant orchestration.
The cantata “O Pequeno Fir” shows that it has a very strong connection to the children's universe.
When I started composing plays for children I discovered a part of me that was half asleep. Writing for children's orchestras and choirs forced me to simplify the musical language, to make it accessible to students at different levels, from those who barely play to the most advanced. The funny thing is that this kind of musical approach helped me find the kind of music I really wanted to write. “Less is more” and “keep it simple” are two of my favorite sayings. It is also a reaction against the hecatomb of complexity and fundamentalism that befell Western classical music after the Second World War. Because I still think that music doesn't need to be complicated or ugly to be interesting.
What aspects do you give most importance to in your creative process?
For me, melody is the queen of music. But if a melody doesn't stick in the ear at all, if we're not able to hum it or recognize it when we hear it again, it's missing something essential. It is not easy to find, especially without falling into banality. Another thing that fascinates me is being able to layer melodies that go well with each other. For me, music also needs to have some kind of narrative. Just as I hate films without a story or plays without a plot, I have no patience for athematic music, without reasons that we can pin down. Music has to tell a story, it has to have characters, motifs or themes that we are able to memorize, and then understand and appreciate what happens to them. When there are no themes, it doesn't hold my attention. It's like a film or a novel without protagonists, without characters with whom we identify. What I love most is transforming and superimposing themes, making them converge or clash, combining them with each other, superimposing them in layers. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were masters of the subject. The ending of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is the paradigmatic case, with that fugue that brings together all the themes in a celestial conjugation. It's as if the entire universe were singing, a moment of pure genius.
Tell us about the experience of composing the opera “Felizmente Há Luar!”, which will premiere on May 8th at Teatro São Luiz.
It is a project that I have dedicated my heart and soul to. I love each of the characters and there is a little of me in each of them, including the villains. For nine months I was so completely immersed in this universe that it was as if I had been living in a parallel reality. It took me four years to compose “A Rainha Louca”, which is a chamber opera and lasts an hour. This time it took me seven months to compose and two months to orchestrate an opera that lasts an hour and a half, with choir, eight soloists and orchestra. I don't even know how I was able to do it anymore.
This opera is based on the work of the same name by Luís Sttau Monteiro and was commissioned by the Portuguese Philharmonic Orchestra, as part of the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the 25th of April. Were you inspired by the legacy of your grandfather Humberto Delgado, the “Fearless General”, to compose it?
This legacy is a great responsibility. Joaquim Benite once suggested that I compose an opera about my grandfather; I told him I couldn't, because it was too personal a matter. When Osvaldo Ferreira challenged me to compose an opera about the 25th of April, at first I was also reluctant, because I thought the theme was not very operatic and I didn't want to compose it for an official celebration. But then I remembered “Lucmente Há Luar!” and I thought it made perfect sense, because it is a metaphor for Salazarist Portugal, post-1958 elections. As an opponent of the Estado Novo, my grandfather deeply touched the hearts of millions of people. His impact was so meteoric and intense that even today there are people who are moved to learn that I am their grandson, who hold my hands and have tears in their eyes. I didn't know my grandfather, because he was murdered in February 1965 and I was born in June of that year. My mother was in the midst of her pregnancy when she received the news. I believe this event was engraved in my deepest psyche.
Does the music you composed also tell part of your story?
Sttau Monteiro's play is full of allusions to Portugal during the Estado Novo. Although the events described take place at the beginning of the 19th century, it is clear that he is alluding to Salazar's dictatorship. Gomes Freire was an extraordinary man, a hero of freedom who deserved to be better known. The way he was arrested, convicted and hanged is a stain on the history of Portugal, similar to the murder of my grandfather. They are comparable events, separated by a century and a half. Furthermore, the figures of Gomes Freire and my grandfather have a lot in common. The way Gomes Freire is described in the play is very similar to the usual descriptions of my grandfather. Both were frontal and fearless, impulsive, reckless, exemplary soldiers and adored by the people.
Were you inspired by the world of intervention music?
I've always liked making allusions and quotations in my works. In this case I made several quotes from songs that became associated with April 25th. In Vicente's aria, the police informer, I quote the “Bullfight” that Fernando Tordo sang at Eurovision and whose subversive poem escaped censorship. In António Falcão's aria, I quote the section in the minor mode of “E Além do Adeus”, that beautiful song sung by Paulo de Carvalho, which served as the first password to the revolution. And then there are Zeca Afonso's songs, which were part of the soundtrack of my childhood, because my brother Álvaro, three years older than me, was always singing and playing them on the guitar. The one I liked most was “vejam bem”, which I inserted in the final quartet of the 1st act and in the final chorus of the opera. Furthermore, and almost without realizing it, I used modal harmonies in the style of Zeca Afonso in the choir songs in the 1st act. There is also “Acordai”, the best known of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s heroic songs, which appears in the António and Matilde Duet, and later in his aria. I have a story about this song. When I was a kid and still didn't know anything about music, my paternal grandparents gave me a small electric organ. It must have been in 1972 or 73, I went to “A Seara” school and there was a music teacher there who taught us heroic Lopes-Graça songs, banned at the time. One of those songs was “Acordai”, which I loved. I remember spending hours playing it on my little electric organ.
Another quote that I especially like is from Serrana by Alfredo Keil, an opera that I love and know by heart. When Matilde tells Beresford that she is from Seia, the four choral chords are the same as Zabel's theme at the beginning of Serrana; I used them as Matilde’s Leitmotif. I must say that although I am not a Wagnerian at all, I fully appreciate the Leitmotif technique he created.
Regarding the trio of governors, I made another type of quote. I used Handel's Sarabanda in D minor, a song that I believe is the origin of the melody for God save the King (the similarities are obvious, although I've never seen it written anywhere). After Kubrick's film "Barry Lyndon" it became a kind of musical symbol of England and that's why I used it in Beresford's aria, when he talks about his homeland. At moments when Principal Sousa makes especially Pharisaic uses of religion, the melody of Our Lady of Fátima appears, in the glockenspiel. And I gave a touch of fado to D. Miguel Forjaz’s aria, “Sonho com um Portugal”. Of the three FFs, I only missed football, because it wasn't relevant.
He considers that music should be made and designed for a specific instrument, because each of them has its own personality. Did you also do this with the voices in the opera “Felizmente Há Luar”?
Yes, all the roles were made with the singers who will play them in mind. When I heard Sílvia Sequeira in a video, I realized that it was for her that I wanted to compose. I wrote each aria for its type of dramatic soprano, thinking about the extraordinary woman that is Matilde de Melo. Raquel Mendes, who was one of the dozens of sopranos who were cast for the opera, has the kind of sweet and firm voice that I had imagined for Mulher do Povo; I liked her so much that I enlarged the paper and wrote one of my favorite arias for her. Pedro Cruz was the only tenor who had the courage to sing Pedrillo's aria that I chose for the casting, because I wanted that kind of comical tenor, with good high notes; He exceeded expectations and that's why I also gave him more prominence, showing in his aria (which is another of my favorites) that even a whistleblower can have a human side. Then there is Tiago Amado Gomes, who I met playing Rossini's Figaro: I wrote for him the role of the ultimate villain, D. Miguel Forjaz, and tailored him, like a tailor. I also wrote the role of Beresford thinking about André Henriques' voice and excellent actor. The icing on the cake was having Carlos Guilherme as Principal Sousa, because Carlos premiered the Governor of my “Doido ea Morte” at São Carlos in 1994: he is the singer with whom I have collaborated most professionally in these thirty years, an excellent actor who He keeps his voice incredibly fit and came to hilariously embody this avatar of Cardinal Cerejeira. He and Tiago make a perfect pair and it was fantastic to watch the complicity that was generated in the cast. The work of Allex Aguilera contributed to this, who directed the actors perfectly. Nowadays it is rare to find an opera director who knows how to stage according to the music and the libretto, instead of superimposing his excessive ego. We have lived for decades in a tyranny of directors who allow themselves to ignore music and didascalia, because they think that their own ideas are always better than those of the composer and librettist. This “belly button” has been catastrophic for the world of opera: I confess that nowadays it is rare for me to go see an opera, I am already traumatized. I will only go after confirming that the staging is not execrable. Thanks to André Cunha Leal, who recommended Allex Aguilera, this is the first time I've worked with a director who knows music, knows what opera is and is guided by what's in the score. Music is the basis of any opera worthy of the name, it is what defines the times, environments and intentions of the text. In the current context, in which iconoclasm has become the norm, each director thinks they have to reinvent everything from scratch, to scandalize even more, as if that were still possible. It became a new form of academicism. I long for an era in which we return to exactly what is in the libretti. Because the Da Ponte, the Piave, the Hoffmansthal, knew what they were doing. What Allex Aguilera is doing is not conservative: it is revolutionary. And fortunately he is having a great career.
What is the essence of this opera?
I often say, half jokingly, that my opera is a cross between Verdi, Zeca Afonso and Kurt Weill. It brings together the two ingredients that most stimulate me musically: the comic and the tragic. The first act is more satirical, the second is more intimate and serious. Despite the tragic ending, Sttau Monteiro's text ends with a message of hope, essentially foreshadowing April 25th. This ending suits me: I am optimistic by nature, I try to see the positive side of things and contribute to improving them. Destroying is very easy, what is difficult is building. Faced with the return of barbarism that we are witnessing internationally, the world needs more than ever to regenerate itself through art. Opera serves as a counterpoint to reality, it must bring us a cathartic beauty, capable of compensating and helping to combat ugliness and the proliferation of the most primitive instincts of human beings.
Is this opera adaptable to different presentation formats?
I made a very pianistic piano version, to allow the opera to be performed with just the piano. Of course, the orchestra enriches it immensely, adding lines, themes, textures and timbres. But I wanted the opera to exist in both formats, to be adaptable to the resources and spaces available, from small local halls to large opera halls. Putting on an operatic production with an orchestra is very expensive. I am extremely grateful to Osvaldo Ferreira and the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa for their effort in carrying out such a production and the orchestra's results have been incredible. But operas can also be accompanied on the piano, it is common abroad and should be common in Portugal. Pocket productions must coexist with large productions, to make opera a much more accessible commodity. Opera should not be seen as a luxury for the elite, but rather as a great popular spectacle. In all theaters, chamber operas or operas accompanied by the piano should be performed, it is a way of democratizing opera and giving work to singers, especially in a country like ours where there are currently so many people singing well.
In opera there needs to be a combination between the music and the text. How do you make a good libretto?
A good libretto has to be concise to give space to the music. The big difference between opera and theater is that, with little text, a lot of music is generated. In an opera it is not possible to use the entire text of a play, as this would make it unsustainably long and drawn out; Strauss's Salome is the exception that proves the rule. It is impossible to sing at the speed at which we speak and not everything lends itself to being put to music. That's why the speeches have to be as lean as possible, saying a lot with few words, avoiding unnecessary repetitions and reverberations. It is necessary to eliminate everything that is not essential, remove redundancies. In the case of “Felizmente Há Luar”, I reduced the text to a fifth or a sixth of the original, cut characters and concentrated on the essentials of the plot. I believe I achieved an interesting counterpoint by creating a “bad” quartet and a “good” quartet; I really like this idea of the two antagonistic quartets, which end the 1st and 2nd act respectively. Furthermore, there is the great collective figure of the people, represented by the choir, which is of central importance and for which I had to add a lot of text, starting from some lines from the original. In terms of form and musical language, I wanted to move away from what contemporary opera usually is and get closer to musicals, which essentially came to play a little of the role that operas played in the 19th century. Allex Aguilera noticed this: the final minutes are in the style of a musical and he did a little Broadway-style choreography, which I thought was great. Another aspect that is similar to musicals is the fact that this opera is not entirely sung: it has several dialogues, short but important. Usually what defines an opera is the fact that it is all sung, but certain parts of the libretto lend themselves poorly to this, and it is good to have moments to breathe between the sung numbers. Instead of using dry recitatives — the only thing I hate in traditional opera — I chose to do accompanied dialogues, like melodrama.
And how did you approach these spoken parts?
These are dialogues with exchanges of important words, which needed to be said more quickly and with tailored music. I love the concept of melodrama, accompanied recitation. I had already had two great experiences in this area: “Romance da Raposa” by Aquilino Ribeiro for Teatro de Almada, a 45-minute theatrical adaptation entirely accompanied by the piano, as if it were the soundtrack of a silent film; and Shakespeare's “King Lear” that I composed for the CCB's Music Days, reducing the piece to one hour, fully accompanied by a chamber group, minute by minute, theme by theme, to fit with the text. In this opera, I wrote the music for the dialogues after composing all the arias, ensembles and choruses. It was easy, because I already had all the themes defined and I just had to use and combine them, preventing the music from drawing too much attention to itself. They are small melodramas inserted into the plot.
And as for writing the libretto, what were your stylistic choices?
I chose to write everything in rhyming verse, which is another thing I appreciate about musicals and has unfortunately gone out of fashion in the world of opera. I only like poetry with rhyme and meter. Without one thing and another, poems, however beautiful they may be, seem like prose to me. I like ultra-metric, ultra-rhymed poetry, where each accent fits perfectly. I especially like it when there are a lot of assonances and internal rhymes, I love this type of musicality in poetry. Therefore, I wrote the entire libretto in verse, mostly in sevensyllables, rhymed whenever possible. I already have experience creating librettos and rhymed translations of operas and poems. I love this translation work. If for some reason I stopped composing, perhaps I would dedicate myself to translating poetry and opera librettos.
What can the public expect from the opera “Felizmente Há Luar!”?
I hope people enjoy the show and keep the music in their ears, as is happening with the choir rehearsed by Filipa Palhares, to whom I am very grateful. I love it when people leave the room humming. I'm not one of those artists who create just to be understood a hundred years from now: I want the public to understand the opera and appreciate it now. But I would also like it to be appreciated a long time from now. Another thing I want is for people to laugh at comical moments, not to be shy about laughing, or even applauding at the end of arias and ensembles, if they feel like it. In Portugal, the public is always very serious at operas, as if it were a mass. I love that there is laughter or applause in the middle of the shows, they allow you to relax and feel the pulse of the audience. It's better to have applause out of time than to have people telling you to shut up. For me this is truly horrible: shushing someone who is applauding out of enthusiasm. It should be banned. If a person applauds it is because they like it, it is a sign of appreciation. The main objective of going to a show is this — to appreciate and enjoy. Otherwise, it's better to stay at home. Nobody pays a ticket to be mortified.
Do you want to be remembered for your creations?
I think any artist wants that. There is something indestructible in the human soul, which endures over time through its creations; art is one of humanity's most powerful time capsules. The great composers, such as Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, are still very much alive among us. When we think of them, it's difficult to imagine anything more vibrant and present than their music. It's as if we know them personally through it. The same happens with the great writers, playwrights, painters, filmmakers — their creations keep them alive through time. Therefore, modestly, this is what I aim for: that my works can move people, not just now, but many years from now.
* Joana Patacas - Communication and Content Consultancy
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Explore the SMART Artist page: Alexandre Delgado
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