Rosa Montero's smile illuminated the De Bijloke concert hall last Monday night in Ghent. She had just removed a thorn that had been stuck in her for nine years, the time that the work Cambio Madre por Moto had been in a drawer for reasons not revealed until now. She admits it herself, she had given up on her. “I am enthralled. It has been an incredible production, the direction and the musicians have been wonderful,” commented the writer after the premiere of this chamber opera composed by the Belgian composer Frank Nuyts from an original libretto of his.
The play, designed to bring the genre closer to young people, is about divorce and was Gerard Mortier's last commission as mayor of the Teatro Real in Madrid. But the work had not seen the light of day until this week at the Flanders Festival, within the cultural programming of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU. “World premiere, yes, but nine years late because it should have premiered in Madrid in 2014,” Montero lamented.
In the discussion prior to the premiere – and, before, in an interview with the Flemish newspaper De Standaard – the Spanish writer and the Belgian composer had just explained the reasons why – they claim – the Real withdrew the title from its programming: the decision staff of a director of the institution, in the interregnum between Mortier and the full inauguration of his successor, Joan Matabosch.
Shortly before the delivery date, the general director of the Real, Ignacio García-Belenguer, summoned Simon Bauwens, Mortier's assistant, to his office to tell him that they were going to remove the opera from their programming, as he explained to La Vanguardia, corroborating the artists' story. “He told me that he did not agree with the topic, that it did not seem appropriate for young people of that age and that he thought it was a bad idea to perform that play,” explains Bauwens, emphasizing that under normal circumstances this position does not have any power over decisions. Real's artistic projects, but that, at that time, Mortier - who was still linked to Real as an artistic advisor and who would die shortly after - was in Germany undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Bauwens addressed the issue with the new mayor, but told him that he could not do anything, that the decision had been made.
Nuyts goes further in his story and attributes the decision to the “religious beliefs” of the Real's senior official. Montero was bewildered by the decision to give up the work. Her text is anything but an apology for divorce, she insists: “It's a duel. “It talks about loss but also about hope, because a divorce is a disaster, but you have to move forward.” If they accepted payment for the commission, it was without any commitment that it would be represented. They thought about it and decided to leave without getting paid, but with the opera under their arms.
Real's version clashes completely with the authors' story. Informed by this newspaper of the demonstrations carried out by Nuyts and Montero and asked about the reasons for the withdrawal of the work from its programming (it was even announced), the communication department of the institution declared yesterday to La Vanguardia that "the artistic direction of the Teatro Real is and has always been autonomous and the programming, as well as the decisions made in this regard, depend on it.”
Nuyts had been looking for a home for years to perform her work with Montero, her favorite Spanish writer. They say that they had remained silent for fear of reprisals. This year, Festival van Vlaanderen director Veerle Simoens learned about the project. She immediately fell in love with the composition and soon gathered all the elements necessary to represent it. "All the pieces fell into place," proudly comments its director, Veerle Simoens. The late premiere is also a tribute to the Belgian director when it is almost 10 years since his death: Ghent was Mortier's hometown, and he was also the first employee of the festival.
Now that the work has come out of hiding, Montero and Nuyts dream of it seeing the light of day in more cities. By the standards of the genre, it is a cheap work, staged by the young director Aïda Gabriëls, who has devised a space with a pop air in which six singers perform (in Spanish) the story, full of humor, of the announcement of a divorce in a family and the not always exemplary reactions of its protagonists. “The stage director has almost put together a visually beautiful opera with very few tricks. It is a privilege to have been here, at this wonderful festival in Ghent with such good professionals doing this wonder, apart from it being my script, of course!”, Montero concluded this Monday in Ghent with a hearty laugh.
