Boris Izaguire throws himself into the zarzuela. He has written the libretto for one, entitled Trato de favor, set in the fictitious prison of Las Albricias and in which he himself will take the stage of the Zarzuela theater for each performance – playing a presenter – with Ainhoa Arteta and Nancy Fabiola Herrera An opera inspired by the time when the diva Sofía Loren had to go to prison for the tax fraud of her husband, Carlo Ponti, and in which Preysler even appears in one of the arias. Composer Lucas Vidal (Madrid, 1984), winner of two Goyas and an Emmy, is the author of the music for a production staged from this Saturday until May 21 by maestro Emilio Sagi. A zarzuela that Arteta claims has "saved his life" and is "the beginning of his new stage". And that he hesitated to do it because it seemed to him that it was inspired by his life.
Izaguirre jokingly says that in the staging of an opera, the librettist is "the pet". He notes that they called him by his name, and the others, teachers". "And even though I'm a media star, it's true that television turns you into a pet, because there came a time when I heard people saying my name in the street and they were actually calling their little dog, which they had named so because they loved me so much ", take a smile. And he explains how the history of the Trato de favor dams came about.
"At some point in 1981, Sofía Loren had to go to prison to pay the sentence for evading taxes and her husband's estate. He stayed there for 17 days. I remember in Caracas a feverish month in my life because I really identified with her, she seemed to me to be an extraordinary person, and I thought: 'What glasses will she wear?' Years later I interviewed her and asked her if it was true that when she left prison she told reporters that the best people she had met in her entire life were left behind. There was a huge silence. I thought I had completely screwed it up. After the dramatic pause, he told me that it had been a long time since that happened and that no one remembered that moment. "I can't assure him that I said these exact words, but some of them were true," explains Izaguirre.
And, he continues, "I thought I had a story to explore here and that's what I tried to do in Trato de favor. It is true that in a prison you do not expect a star to arrive and the first thing that can happen is that it is demanded to be treated like another prisoner, but it is not. In this case it is Ana Mía, an extraordinary actress and singer with an incredible career that we discover includes the director of the prison and her only man, who is in charge of celebrating a festival of zarzuelas since five years I was passionate about being able to build a tragicomedy that hides a love".
A love with music that in this case sounds like a great tribute to the genre, with xotis, pasdobles and ballads, but also with current rhythms in the score, as composers such as Alonso or Sorozábal already did in their zarzuelas. A score that Ainhoa Arteta has managed to bring to life after a hard process, reveals: initially she thought that what was happening in the work was talking about her. "Many things about Ana Mía are similar to what happened to me, including prison, which no one knows about because I escaped. I saw in her everything that had happened to me in a very negative way and now I have finally been able to laugh, see it as if it were Boris, her book has saved my life. It is the beginning of my new stage. It has come as a miracle for me, at first I didn't even want to do it, but I've had everyone's help, we've all had things happen in our lives that weren't pleasant, and one of the ways to heal - is to take it with a sense of humor, that's what this zarsuela has achieved with me", she concludes excitedly.
