From the program:
Setting
The Thirty Years' War ended in 1648 with an arranged marriage between Louis XIV of France and his double cousin Maria Teresa, the daughter of Philip IV of Spain. She took on the royal name Marie-Therese in a ceremony organized by Diego Velazquez, Philip's court painter, on Pheasant Island in the Bidassoa River. The event represented the transition of power in Europe from the old "Regime of Mystery" to the new "Empire of Reason." Through music, dance, movement, and theatrics, )musica(aperta reevaluates the event through the looking glass of Velazquez's contemporary painting Portrait of the Family of Philip IV, also known as Las Meninas. In this ars pictorica, what the painting hides matters as much as what it shows. The missing person in this family portrait is the absent daughter, Maria Teresa, given to France in exchange for peace.
Scene
The chambers of the deceased Prince Baltasar at the Royal Alcazar in Madrid, assigned to Velazquez as a studio after the boy died.
A court garden.
The time is circa 1660.
Action
The play is structured as a chess game. The first act takes place in a single morning circa 1656. The second act unfolds in a single afternoon, a year later. The third act happens sometime around 1660, and has the structure of a masque written by the king. The game is interrupted by interludes taken from Tiento XXIII por Alamire by Joan Bautista Cabanilles.
The performance combined instrumental and vocal works by such composers as Shostakovich, Lully, Messiaen, Prokofiev, Golijov and others with dance and acting. I greatly admire )musica(aperta's vision to combine the arts into something new and fresh and hope their vision will find its audience. Many thanks to our friends Stanley and Christiane for inviting us to this extraordinary evening.
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