María Pagés is heating the Liceu

In keeping with the heat and post-pandemic spirit, the Liceu public surrendered yesterday to María Pagés in the absolute premiere of From Sheherazade to Yo, Carmen.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 May 2022 Friday 13:58
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María Pagés is heating the Liceu

In keeping with the heat and post-pandemic spirit, the Liceu public surrendered yesterday to María Pagés in the absolute premiere of From Sheherazade to Yo, Carmen. The jaleíllo flamenco that the cantaoras on stage seemed unable to repress contributed to the respectable standing up unanimously and, with the capacity 65% ​​full, dedicating six minutes of applause to the artists.

Eleven dancers and seven musicians for a show that arises from a profound reflection on men and women and what the patriarchy has reserved for them since the beginning of time.

Flamenco has those things. In a single gesture, it contains the entire essence of the message, a state of mind, its jocularity or its drama. And that's where Pagés, bailaora from this and other lives, tells the audience the good news: that what has finally been built, democracy and the welfare society, shouldn't be questioned today.

And the story of Sheherazade serves to point directly at the target of a burning issue: the regression that is the imperative of gender identity and the aesthetics associated with one and the other sex. The narrator of One Thousand and One Nights reads non-stop for the sultan precisely to instill in him an interest in the word and save her sister from the fury of this murderer of maidens.

Obsessed with leaving no witnesses to his sexual dysfunction, the sultan kills them after spending the night with them. His virility, his manliness, his honor and other attributes with which the patriarchy subjugates him in that ancient legend –which precedes Islam–, are still valid today in one way or another: with honor crimes or disguised as transgression.

Eleven paintings make up the show that perhaps lacks a point of rest and cooking. Especially to occupy a Liceu, in which the disproportionate microphones of cante ruin some of the well-deserved moments of intimacy, such as the one that Pagés did have alone –spectacular arm movement– and the guitar.

With the moon as the only prop, the choreographer and playwright El Arbi El Harti review myths on that unique night in which the story takes place. The poetess Sappho or Blimunda de Saramago appear, who sees people from the inside, or Bernarda Alba de Lorca, who wields the patriarchal cane. And that everyday Carmen that Pagés already traced a few years ago.

While the music, original, goes through unexpected registers but also through the classic sarao, which sneaks in to finish everything as it began, with orientalist sounds and a twilight tone.