SEVILLE'S BIENAL DE FLAMENCO 2002. 'ORESTES EN LISBOA'

Flamenco Greek tragedy complete with instructions

Silvia Calado Olivo. Seville, September 12th, 2002.
Photos: Javier Hurtado

Orestes en Lisboa. Cast. The gypsies: Agamenonn (Antonio Reyes), Climestrea (Carmela Greco), Orestes (Manuel Reyes), Electra (Alegría Suárez), Ifigenia (Inge Marín). The gods: Zeus (Alejandro Granados), Atenea (Rafaela Carrasco). The musicians: Guitarra (Canito), Piano (Pablo Suárez), Bass (Juan Miguel Guzmán), Cello (José Luis López), Percussion (José Antonio Galicia, Daniel Suárez). Chorus: Corifeo (Rafael Jiménez El Falo), Men's chorus (Juan José Suárez y Víctor Carrasco), Women's chorus (Patricia Prieto and María Nuño de la Rosa). Director: Francisco Suárez. Script: Blanca Suñén and Francisco Suárez. Teatro Lope de Vega. Seville, Setptember 12th, 2002. 9:00 p.m.

If the mixture of Esquilo's 'La Orestea' with Portuguese rhythms already sounds like a mish-mosh, add the story of a Portuguese gypsy family feud told through flamenco dance and theater, and the cocktail requires instructions. And so there were. The playbill included a sheet which not only advised that La Tolea would be substituted by Carmela Greco, and Manolete did indeed announce her quitting the group, but also reexplained the story line and even offered a chart with the symbolic connotations assigned to each piece of scenery: the sheet of steel is the "sign of power and violence", the green shawl is "the unjustice of feminine submission", the glass lamp is "the presence of death"… When a work doesn't speak for itself, you know something's wrong.

Let's take one part at a time... The dance. A couple of numbers would have to be taken out of context in order to find flamenco dancing worthy of comment. In that of the gods it so happens, with Alejandro Granados, in the role of Zeus, and Rafaela Carrasco playing Athena, one danced with his accustomed classical elegance, and the other with sinouous precision. The rest of the dancers, the humans, didn't even come near the foothills of Olympus.

The music. Juan Antonio Suárez' composition, Canito, searched in vain to be outstanding. The guitarist was lost, as was the cajòn, the rest of the strings tried, unsuccessfully to get it together as much as possible, and José Antonio Galicia, one of the sure-fire elements of the cast, made an effort to emphasize intensity with the percussive instruments at hand, with his experience in backing up choreographies by artists like Rafael Amargo and Ángel Rojas, as well as with 'Tres en raya' (Alía, 2001), from whom he takes ideas. The cante, brought on as an element of the choral group, wasn't quite up to divine level either. El Falo drowned his problems in verses with explanatory content more apropòs of a school show. The soleá, the seguiriyas, the rumba, the alboreá that couldn't make it, the rumba Catalana, the tientos, the alegrías, the informative ballad…by none other than Amalia (Rodrigues), thanks to canned fado!

The play. Even with a libretto, the narration was hard to follow. Francisco Suárez didn't use actors, or give lines to the dancers as he did with Merche Esmeralda in 'Bodas de Sangre' (1998). The dance was supposed to tell the story and the text, through cante and subtleties. The staging had the same mission, in an openly symbolic way, as was explained above, and also the lighting, always skimpy in its effort to be mysterious. And there was an excess of props, and glitter, in this flamenco version of a Greek tragedy, which ends up being neither one thing, nor the other. The fact that some people left before the final curtain, and others broke into applause, gave another twist…

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