Teatro Real: Purcell: The Indian Queen

Henry Purcell died in 1965, while composing his last opera “The Indian Queen”. So his brother Daniel completed hastily and with poor inspiration the rich, visionary and transcendental score of the great British composer. Some centuries later, Peter Sellars has imagined a fresh and unedited new version of Purcell’s last masterpiece, including some of Purcell’s most inspired songs, with a new libretto adapted from “La niña blanca y los pajaros sin pies” (The white maid and the feetless birds) from Nicaraguan novelist Rosario Aguilar. The original libretto by John Dryden was supposed to be situated at the courts of Lima and Mexico before the Spanish invasion, developing how an impossible love story between the Queen of the Aztecs and the general of the Yncas will provoke an imaginary conflict between Yncas and Aztecs. Sellars personal vision is more political; it intertwines music, dance, literature, theatre and visual arts and describes the first contact between the Europeans and the Mayas of the New World, a personal and choral narration of the Conquista through the lives of two women who created a new culture.