Maria de Buenos Aires - CD Booklet

MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES

Astor Piazzolla composer Horacio Ferrer lyricist

Valentina Montoya Martínez Nicholas Mulroy

Juanjo Lopez Vidal narrator

Victor Villena bandoneón Mr McFall's Chamber

MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES

PART 1 (CD1)

1 Cuadro 1: Alevare [6:21]

2 Cuadro 2: Tema de María María’s Theme [4:53]

3 Cuadro 3: Balada renga para un organito loco Lame Ballad for a Crazy Barrel Organ [7:10]

4 Cuadro 4: Yo soy María I am María [3:17]

5 Cuadro 5: Milonga carrieguera por María la Niña Milonga for the Child María (in the style of Evaristo Carriega) [5:16]

6 Cuadro 6: Fuga y misterio Fugue and Mystery [3:18]

7 Cuadro 7: Poema valseado Waltzed Poem [2:38]

8 Cuadro 8: Tocata rea Lowlife Toccata [4:53]

9 Cuadro 9: Miserere canyengue de los ladrones antiguos en las alcantarillas

Canyengue Miserere of the Old Gutter Thieves [6:35]

Total playing time (CD1) [44:27]

Recorded on 18-19 June 2016 at The Tom Fleming Centre, Erskine Stewart’s Melville Schools, Edinburgh

Producer: Paul Baxter

Engineer: Ben Seal

24-bit digital editing: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover image: Dolores Molinari, Caos, acrylic on canvas, 2013, fb.com/dolomolinari

María de Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio

Ferrer published by Warner/Chappell Music

Session photography: Steven Allan Images

Design: John Christ

Booklet editor: Henry Howard

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk

Astor Piazzolla composer (1921–1992)

Horacio Ferrer lyricist (1933–2014)

Valentina Montoya Martínez

María/The Shadow of María

Nicholas Mulroy

The voice of a payador/ Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow/ First Psychoanalyst/ A Voice of That Sunday

Juanjo Lopez Vidal

The Duende (narrator)

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Victor Villena

Musical director/bandoneón

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Cyril Garac, Robert McFall violins

Brian Schiele viola

Su-a Lee cello

Rick Standley double bass

Alison Mitchell flute/piccolo

Malcolm MacFarlane guitar

Phil Alexander piano

Ian Sandilands, Stuart Semple percussion

Speaking Chorus

Lisa Eskuche, Tanja Jacobs, Ann McFall, Rhona McLeod, Doreen Rodgers

Brothel-keepers/spaghetti-kneaders/ Three Marionettes Drunk on Things

Roberto Rabinovich Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow

Pedro Castillo, Gustavo Pardo, Roberto Rabinovich

Old thieves/ Magi-Bricklayers/The Men who Returned from Mystery

In 1965, the famous Argentinian astrologer Horangel, drawing up Astor Piazzolla’s birth chart, predicted that within two years a man of vital importance to him would come knocking on his door. In 1967, the Uruguayan poet Horacio Ferrer came to call and, because the bell was not working, knocked. Ferrer had dedicated his new volume of poetry, Romancero Canyengue, to Piazzolla, and it was only then that Piazzolla first became aware of Ferrer as a poet. The composer had previously known him as the editor and illustrator of a magazine, Tangueando, which championed the Nuevo Tango movement which Piazzolla was spearheading, as well as the founder of a club, El Club de la Guardia , which provided a platform for it. On reading this new volume of Ferrer’s poetry, Piazzolla immediately rang him. ‘This book,’ he said, ‘these verses, achieve exactly what I have been trying to achieve in music. From now on we must work together.’ It was this invitation which led to their collaboration in writing María de Buenos Aires towards the end of 1967, with its premiere in May 1968.

1968 was a year in which almost every country in Europe, both West and East, faced widespread student demonstrations; while in North America, civil rights marches, antiVietnam war demonstrations, hippie love-ins, and the early stages of the feminist, ecology and gay rights movements all erupted at the

same moment. Meanwhile, in Argentina the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, which had been established by military coup in 1966, was trying to repress all forms of ‘immoralism’, including miniskirts, long hair and anything permissive or avant-garde.

An example of this state censorship was the banning, in August 1968, of the Argentinian premiere of Alberto Ginastera’s opera Bomarzo, on the grounds of its sexual content. This was the cultural context in which Piazzolla and Ferrer found themselves writing María de Buenos Aires. The libretto makes mention of a Beatle, hippies and girls in blue jeans. It also several times makes play of the adjective zurdo (lefty), and variations on it (zurdamente –lefthandedly, a zurda – on the left).

The original production of María de Buenos Aires, in keeping with the multimedia experimentation of its times, used a backdrop of projections, both of film and of slides, created for the work by Adolfo Bronowski. The years 1967 to 1969 saw the creation of many new art-forms – not only light shows, but also, for example, rock opera and the concept album. María de Buenos Aires likewise falls outside traditional forms. Piazzolla and Ferrer described it as an operita. People have tended to take this as meaning a small opera or operetta, and many productions have tried to turn it into one, introducing dance, inventing new storylines and creating new characters

and subplots. However, such attempts are based on a misunderstanding. Ferrer recalled a conversation with Piazzolla during the planning of the work in which, from what he remembered, the composer said:

What is this thing? I haven’t a clue! On the one hand it’s a bit like an oratorio; on the other, a bit like a cantata – but it’s neither one nor the other – nor, for that matter, is it a musical; even less an opera. I have an idea – look – it’s not opera by any stretch of the imagination, but just as an opera can be called a work, or obra , what we have written could be referred to as a little work, or obrita – so why don’t we call it an operita?

The two of them realised that the piece they had written lay outside any conventional genre. If it has antecedents, they are Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story (The Threepenny Opera , like María de Buenos Aires , plays out among pimps, thieves and beggars, while West Side Story even has a heroine called Maria).

María de Buenos Aires ’ first run of performances took place at a Buenos Aires venue called La Planeta. Critical response was adverse and audiences stayed away, alarmed by reports of the obscure libretto and the surreal plot. Both Piazzolla and Ferrer incurred large personal debts as a result. Neither of

them, on the other hand, ever doubted for a moment the quality of their operita. Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo, particularly since his return to Buenos Aires in 1955 from his studies with Nadia Boulanger, had been incorporating classical and jazz elements into the more cabaret-style tango music which he had grown up playing during the late thirties and forties. Here, in María de Buenos Aires, there are fugues and toccatas alongside a wide spread of Argentinian music traditions – milonga , canyengue, candombe, tango and the sparring verse dialogue typical of the folk song tradition of the payada. The instrumentation, likewise, ranges from traditional tango instruments, such as flute, acoustic guitar, violin and bandoneón, through to the more contemporary sound-world of vibraphone, electric guitar and drum kit.

Horacio Ferrer’s libretto is highly poetic. When criticised for the fact that the work was difficult to understand, Ferrer answered that he hadn’t written it to be understood, but to create emotion and atmosphere. In another interview he said ‘Poetry is not to be read; it is to be recited. It is like music … reading poetry is like reading a score; it is something that happens in the air, not on paper.’ As with any writer, influences are manifold and diverse, but Lorca is definitely one, especially the poetry from his surrealist phase. The title of Ferrer’s collection of poems about Buenos Aires’ low life,

Romancero Canyengue, is a direct reference to Lorca’s Romancero Gitano. On the other hand, Ferrer’s mythologising of criminal street culture follows in the footsteps of Borges who raised the mythical gangsters of the past to the status of epic heroes:

Where are those who felt no hatred, lust for money or love But lived and died by the knife? Although these vicious daggers –or that other dagger, Time itself, have been lost in the mud, Today, beyond time and ill-fated death, Those dead people live on in tango. (Tango, 1958)

María de Buenos Aires was composed in the months after the release of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Although hallucinogenic drugs don’t appear to have played any part in Ferrer’s creative process, his surrealist libretto seems to be breathing some of the same air as the psychedelic pop lyrics of the day, while its distortions of time are reminiscent of that adopted grandfather of psychedelia, Lewis Carroll. For example, during the operita the main character, María, experiences a whole lifetime and a half (birth, death, rebirth and birth of a daughter), while, for the other characters, it seems that only a few days have elapsed.

One striking aspect of Ferrer’s language is his bringing together of lunfardo, the criminal

street slang of Buenos Aires, with biblical language and references to religious ritual and the occult. He incorporates many allusions specific to Buenos Aires street life – to gambling, to horse racing, to tango poets of the past (Discépolo, Olivari), to city landmarks – and uses not only many lunfardo words, but also a number of neologisms.

Who is María? Ferrer often said that she was a representation of Buenos Aires itself. She is closely associated with tango (‘María tango, slum María,/María night, María fatal passion,/ María of love, of Buenos Aires, that’s me!’).

On one level her death and resurrection in the piece represent tango’s fall from grace in the fifties and sixties and its subsequent disinterment and reinvention by the authors of the present operita themselves. However, on a deeper level the character of María cannot be pinned down to such a narrow interpretation. Certainly she is the quintessence of her city (‘I am my city!’) and of the tango street culture, but, at the same time, she is repeatedly described in a way which associates her with the Virgin Mary or, indeed, Christ. More than anything María is essential womanhood, and, although on one level she is fatally corrupted by the cabaret culture of her city (in particular, by the bad, bad bandoneón), what shines through in her character more than anything is her essential incorruptibility (‘and yet, the heart/ Has refused to be worse’).

What happens in the operita? María is born in poverty on the outside of town. She grows up and moves to the middle of the city, to the cabaret underworld, a world of old gutter thieves, brothel-keepers, pickpockets, tarts and pimps, where things go wrong for her. Above all, it is the bandoneón who corrupts her, in revenge for which the Duende cuts the bandoneón down the middle with a ‘verse like a pickaxe’. María dies and goes to hell (‘There goes María’s shadow to her other hell …’). Her shadow wanders around the city and encounters, in one of the infernal circles, a chorus of psychoanalysts. To one of them she opens up about the traumas of growing up in poverty (‘Of the endless greys of the past/I can only remember/That one cruel mystery that screamed at me:/“Be born!”’) By this stage the narrator, the Duende, has thoroughly entered the story he is himself narrating; brooding in his local, magical bar over the loss of the adored heroine of his narrative, he attracts the attention of three drunken marionettes, who decide to help him bring about the birth of a new María. They ‘run amok in the streets of Buenos Aires, looking for the seed of a child for the Shadow of María’. Soon the Shadow of María goes into labour. Nearby, MagiBricklayers and spaghetti-kneaders tremble and hallucinate as a result of the coming miracle (“What have they put in the drinks that/There’s a gang of little stars where the olives used to be?”). The new María is born.

The first half of the operita is filled with the imagery of Easter, and moves towards the passion and death of María – finishes, if you like, on Good Friday; the second begins with María’s descent into Hell, but then moves on to her resurrection, to an annunciation and a miraculous birth – the birth of a new María as the Christmas bells ring out.

The characters in the operita are often fleeting; fantastical, and for the most part observers, they come and go throughout the piece: the Sleepy Sparrow (in lunfardo a ‘sparrow’ can mean a bad character), a payador (a gaucho itinerant singer), The Voice of That Sunday, The Men who Returned from Mystery and some old gutter thieves, as well as brothelkeepers, psychoanalysts, Three Marionettes Drunk on Things, Magi-Bricklayers, spaghettikneaders and spectators. The only two who appear throughout the piece are María herself (albeit transformed, following her death at what might be called the end of the first ‘act’, into The Shadow of María) and the speaking character, the Duende, a spirit-being who narrates the story and, in the second half of the operita, enters into and helps to steer the plot. In the first run of the piece in 1968, but also many times subsequently, the part of the Duende was played by Horacio Ferrer himself, and there is an overlap between real-life writer and the character he had created and was acting: both adore María and all she stands for;

Piazzolla and Ferrer continued to work together after María de Buenos Aires , but mostly on individual songs, such as the highly successful Balada para un loco. Their only other work for the stage was the 1971 oratorio, El pueblo joven, commissioned by Saarbrücken’s Channel 2 TV in Germany. Ferrer continued to compose oratorios for the stage, but with other composers, such as Horacio Salgán and Juan José Mosalini. In 1976, Ferrer moved to a flat above the Hotel Alvear, in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires. Anecdote

has it that he was known, from time to time, to descend to the hotel bar, declaim passages from María de Buenos Aires to the drinkers there, and then disappear again upstairs. It is tempting to picture him as the Duende, who, in the operita ’s ‘magical bar’, ‘Came along to tell the tale –/Has lost a shadow/And, in his drunkenness, keeps calling it.’

© 2017 Robert McFall

I am indebted to Nicolá Deheza’s thesis ‘Proyecto Final de Licenciatura en Artes del Teatro y Escenografía’, University del Salvador, Buenos Aires, for many observations and facts in my article. both narrate; and both are agents in her resurrection and, therefore, in the resurgence of the tango culture which is such a part of her.

Cuadro 1: Alevare

El Duende:

Ahora que es la hora y que un rumor de yerba mora trasnocha en tu silencio, por un poro de este asfalto yo habré de conjurar tu voz … Ahora que es la hora.

Ahora que ya has muerto para siempre y van de asalto, por vos, mis brujas rubias a tanguear misas calientes al alba, con sus lerdas putañías de contraltos;

Ahora que tu amor se fue a baraja y, zurdamente, con una extraña arcada canallesca en cada ojera, te ardió una cruz de vino en la tiniebla de la frente;

Ahora que en la sórdida tensión filibustera de un clave bien trampeado tocan tangos con tus huesos las manos desveladas de un Caín y una trotera;

Scene 1: Alevare [the beginning of a tango]

The Duende:

Now that the time has come and a murmur of black nightshade

Remains awake in your silence, through a pore in this asphalt

I must conjure up your voice … now that the time has come.

Now that you are forever dead, and my blonde witches are partying

For you, tangoing hot masses at dawn

With their dull, low, tarts’ litanies;

Now that your love threw in its hand and, lefthandedly,

With a strange, mean ark in the rings under each eye,

Burnt the wine cross of a hangover in the darkness of your brow;

Now that in the sordid, gangsterish tension

Of a well tampered clavier the sleepless

Hands of a Cain and a street walker play tangos with your bones;

Ahora que el rencor, con rabia y pólvora de un peso gatilla, en su plegado bandoneón, la hechicería de un golpe en Ay Menor para el costado de tus besos;

Ahora que ya estás de nunca más, Niña María, yo mezclaré un puñado de esa voz bandoneonera, que aún quema en tu garganta, con un poco de la mía,

Con borra de recuerdos, fiato negro y carraspera tordilla de un bordón. Así, del íntimo extramuro porteño de tu adiós, atravesando las fronteras

Sencillas de la muerte, he de traer tu canto oscuro.

Tendrá la edad de Dios y dos antiguas mataduras:

un odio a diestra; y, a zurda, una ternura. Y al duro

Y dulce son fantasma de sus ecos, las futuras Marías, repechando Santa Fe rumbo a otra aurora, se apurarán temblando sin saber por qué se apuran …

Now that spite, with rage and a penny’s worth of gunpowder

Triggers, in its pleated bandoneón, the witchcraft of a blow

In Ouch minor for the side of your kisses;

Now that you are never more, child María, I shall blend a handful of that bandoneón voice

That still burns in your throat, with a little bit of mine,

With dregs of memories, black breath, and the dapple-grey hoarse note

Of a bass string. Thus, from your intimate goodbye on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, crossing the simple frontiers

Of death, I shall bring up your dark song.

It will be the same age as God and have two old stigmata:

On the right, hate, and on the left tenderness.

And to the hard

And sweet ghostly sound of its echoes, the Marías-to-be,

Climbing up Santa Fe Avenue towards a new day, Will tremble and hurry, not knowing why …

Ahora que es la hora. Humo zaino y yerba mora … Penacho de relente, ya tu vozmaríamente- vendrá con tu memoria, aquí, pequeña y una, ahora.

Ahora que es tu hora: María de Buenos Aires.

Cuadro 2: Tema de María (instrumental)

María responde a esa convocatoria y aparece encarnada en su voz en un tema de tango, ‘Tema de María’. El tango es el lenguaje de María, aqui una canción sin palabras.

Cuadro 3: Balada renga para un organito loco

La voz de un payador: Pianito de mala racha que muele cuentos … ¡a ver! ¡Si muestra el rengo en la hilacha de su valse, a la muchacha, la que nadie quiere ver!

Voces de los Hombres que Volvieron del Misterio: Que moje el Diablo en garnacha su renga pata al moler.

Now that the time has come, chestnut fog and black nightshade …

A plume of night-dew, your voice, María-like, Will come up with your memory, here, small and one, now.

Now that your time has come, María of Buenos Aires.

Scene 2: María’s Theme (instrumental)

María responds to this appeal and appears embodied in her voice in a tango theme, ‘María’s theme’. The tango is María’s language, and it is here a song without words.

Scene 3: Lame Ballad for a Crazy Barrel Organ

The voice of a payador (gaucho itinerant singer): Luckless little piano

Which grinds out stories … let’s see If the lame man shows

The true colours of his waltz to the girl, She who no-one wants to see!

Voices of Men who Returned from Mystery: Let the Devil dip his gammy leg

In Garnacha wine as he grinds.

La voz de un payador:

El tiempo muestra la hilacha, ¡y nadie la quiere ver!

El Duende:

Ella vino desde aquella dimensión transbarriotera donde alcanza, a la esperanza, una barrera y un camino; la campana, tres estrellas, una ojera en el balcón sombroso, un gol, la plaza … El sol sin prisa de una misa con mañanas y vecinos y torcazas; algunos mozos que le dén a las polleras; y un andén, con otro humo y otra pena y otro tren para la espera. Una novena, una ramera, un almacén.

La voz de un payador:

La pequeña nació un día que estaba borracho Dios: por eso, en su voz, dolían tres clavos zurdos …

¡Nacía con un insulto en la voz!

Voces de los Hombres que Volvieron del Misterio:

Tres clavos chuecos … Un día que estaba mufado Dios.

La voz de un payador:

Tres clavos negros … Un día que estaba de estaño Dios.

The voice of a payador:

Time shows its true colours And no one wants to see them.

The Duende:

She came from that dimension out beyond the town where a fence and a road are reached by hope; the bell, three stars, an eye ringed with shadows on the shady balcony, a goal, the square … The unhurried sun of a mass with mornings, neighbours, and doves; some boys excited by skirts; and a railway platform with another smoke and another sorrow and another train to wait for, a novena, a hooker, a corner shop.

The voice of a payador :

The wee girl was born on a day When God was drunk; That’s why three bolshie nails Sounded out the pain in her voice … She was born With a curse in her voice!

Voices of Men who Returned from Mystery:

Three crooked nails on a day When God was in a bad mood.

The voice of a payador : Three black nails

On a day when God was propping up the bar.

El Duende:

Y dos angelotes de la guarda parda, dos raros palomos que andaban de trote por la orilla ñata, trajeron -llorando- a la Niña en el lomo.

En la cal mulata del último muro, plegando de pena las alas de lata, grabaron su nombre: María, con balas morenas. De arena y de frío le hicieron los días, ¡tan duros! Y, a espaldas del río, allá donde el río se junta a la nada, la Niña María creció en siete días.

La voz de un payador:

Zapada de contrasuerte, Milonga a suerte y verdad, que un bordón de mala muerte -sin llorarte ni querertefraseaba en tu soledad …

Voces de los Hombres que Volvieron del Misterio:

Pequeña … ¡Qué inversa suerte saber toda la verdad!

La voz de un payador: La zapada de la muerte punteaba en su soledad.

El Duende:

Como esta ciudad, de duelo y de fiesta, robada a las brujas terrajas y en celo que empujan la vida, María fue un poco del loco desvelo de cada baraja suicida y vacía jugada a la apuesta perdida de la soledad. Fue el

The Duende:

And two chubby, dreary angels, two strange doves that trotted along the flat shore, brought the Child – crying – on their back. On the dark rendering of the last wall, folding their tin wings in sadness, they wrote her name, María, with dark bullets. They created her days out of sand and cold – so hard! And on the further bank of the river, where the river meets nothingness, the child María grew up in seven days.

The voice of a payador :

Zapada [a tango improvisation] of ill fortune, Milonga of luck and truth

Which a rough bass string strumming –Without crying about you or loving you either –Was playing in your loneliness …

Voices of Men who Returned from Mystery:

Little girl, what twisted luck

To know the whole truth!

The voice of a payador:

The zapada of death

Played in its loneliness.

El Duende:

Like this city, of grieving and partying, stolen from low-life witches on heat who drive life on, María was part of the deranged insomnia of each suicidal and empty poker hand played on a lost gamble of loneliness. She was the verse of

verso de antojo broncao en la puerta del primer fracaso y la rosa tuerta de un payaso cojo. Diosa y atorrante, del cielo y del hampa fue trampa lo mismo. Y atados de un pelo por el alba van, su parte de abismo,su parte de pan.

La voz de un payador:

Y en el barrio, las arpías viejas de negro capuz como en una eucaristía mugrentera, por María rezan lunfardos en cruz.

Voces de los Hombres que Volvieron del Misterio:

Allá en el barrio, María, ¡le han puesto nombre a tu cruz!

La voz de un payador:

María de Agorería, tendrás dos tangos por cruz …

El Duende:

Pero aquellos hombres, los rudos maestros de mi tristería, que saben del mudo arremango que cabe a ese nombre, y han vuelto -a su modo- tan lerdos, tan serios de todos los nuestros misterios, cuando hay pena llena canyengueando el aire de las curderías, lo nombran -apenas- ladrando a su recuerdo la sombra de los tangos que ya fueron y no existen todavía.

impulsive anger at the door of first failure and the one-eyed rose of a limping clown. Goddess and waster, from the heavens and from the underworld, she was all the same a trap. And, tied up by a hair, through the dawn they go, part abyss and part bread.

The voice of a payador :

In the neighbourhood, the harpies, Old women in black hoods, As in a filthy Eucharist, Pray for María in lunfardo slang, Their arms outstretched.

Voices of Men who Returned from Mystery:

There in the neighbourhood, María, Your cross has been named!

The voice of a payador:

María of the prophecy, You will have two tangos far a cross …

The Duende:

But those men, the rough masters of my sadness, who know about the quiet rolling up of sleeves which that name evokes, and have come back – as they do – so slowly, so solemnly, from all our mysteries, when there is full-bodied suffering dancing a canyengue [form of tango] in the thick fug of the bars – give it a name, uncertainly, barking out to her memory the shadow of past tangos and of those that don’t yet exist.

La voz de un payador: Triste María de Buenos Aires …

El Duende: De olvido eres entre todas las mujeres.

Cuadro 4: Yo soy María

María:

¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires!

De Buenos Aires María ¿no ven quién soy yo?

¡María tango, María del arrabal!

¡María noche, María pasión fatal!

¡María del amor! ¡De Buenos Aires soy yo!

Yo soy María de Buenos Aires

si en este barrio la gente pregunta quién soy, pronto muy bien lo sabrán las hembras que me envidiarán, ¡y cada macho a mis pies como un ratón en mi trampa ha de caer!

¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires!

¡Soy la más bruja cantando y amando también!

Si el bandoneón me provoca … ¡Tiará, tatá!

Le muerdo fuerte la boca … ¡Tiará, tatá!

¡Con diez espasmos en flor que yo tengo en mi ser!

The voice of a payador : Sad María of Buenos Aires …

The Duende: Forgotten art thou Amongst all women.

Scene 4: I am María

María:

I am María of Buenos Aires!

María of Buenos Aires, don’t you see who I am?

María tango, slum María, María night, María fatal passion, María of love, of Buenos Aires, that’s me!

I am María of Buenos Aires

If people in the neighbourhood should ask who I am, Soon the women who envy me Will know it very well And every macho will fall at my feet

As if a mouse had fallen into my trap!

I am María of Buenos Aires!

I’m the utmost witch both at singing and loving.

If the bandoneón arouses me … tia-ra, ta-ta! I bite it hard on its mouth … tia-ra, ta-ta! With ten flowering spasms that I hold within my being!

Siempre me digo ¡Dale María!

¡Cuando un misterio me viene trepando en la voz!

Y canto un tango que nadie jamás cantó y sueño un sueño que nadie jamás soñó, ¡porque el mañana es hoy con el ayer después, che!

¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires! De Buenos Aires María ¡yo soy mi ciudad!

¡María tango, María del arrabal!

¡María noche, María pasión fatal!

¡María del amor! ¡De Buenos Aires soy yo!

Cuadro 5: Milonga carrieguera por María la Niña

Porteño Gorrión con Sueño (cantado):

En los ojos de mi niña, contracompás de otros llantos, anda una oscura nostalgia de cosas que aún no han pasado.

La calle le echó los naipes de odiar, recontramarcados, la madre hilaba perezas; y el padre arriaba fracasos.

La vieja tristonguería del blues de los lunfardarios, da un qué sé yo a mi María y otro al lomo de su gato.

I always say to myself, ‘Go for it, María!’ When a mystery comes climbing up my voice

And I sing a tango nobody ever sang before And I dream a dream nobody ever dreamt before, Because tomorrow is today and then comes yesterday, man!

I am María of Buenos Aires!

Of Buenos Aires María, I am my city!

María tango, slum María, María night, María fatal passion, María of love! Of Buenos Aires, that’s me!

Scene 5: Milonga for the Child María (in the style of Evaristo Carriega)

Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow (sung):

In the eyes of my child,

Offbeat of other upsets, There is a dark nostalgia For things that have not yet happened.

The street told her fortune with the cards of hate, With cards that were marked; Her mother wove laziness; And her father herded up failures.

The old, sad, tango bar

With the lunfardo Buenos Aires blues

Gives a certain I don’t know what to my María And a something else to her cat’s back.

(recitado) Zaina la voz, la cadera, la crencha y los pechos zainos, le van, de furca, en la espalda, las ganas de veinte machos.

(cantado) De renoche, cuando llueve siempre igual -siempre- en su patio, le cuentan tangos de hadas las bocas del subterráneo.

Setenta veces los siete vientos del Sur, la han alzado; sólo a mi voz ella entorna su piel, su rosa y sus años.

María:

Porteño gorrión con sueño, vos nunca me alcanzarás.

Soy rosa de un no te quiero, ya nunca me alcanzarás.

Porteño Gorrión con Sueño (cantado):

Te irás de noche, María de este cantón porteñato, con la trenza destrenzada y el sueño desabrochado.

Y los pardos camioneros que estiban bronca al mercado te harán un ramo de grelos y un coro de navajazos.

(spoken) Chestnut is her voice, her hips, her mane and her breasts are chestnut. She is carrying as a yoke on her back The desires of twenty men. (sung) Late at night, when it’s raining, always the same – always – in her courtyard the mouths of the underground station tell her fairy tangos.

Seventy times seven Winds of the south have lifted her; Only to my voice does she turn Her skin, her pink, and her years.

María:

Sleepy sparrow of Buenos Aires, You’ll never catch up with me. I’m like a rose that says I don’t love you, You’ll never catch up with me now.

Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow (sung):

You’ll go at night, María, From this district of Buenos Aires

With your plaits undone And your dreams in tatters.

And the dark truck-drivers Who hump their anger around the market Will put together for you a bouquet of turnip tops And a choir of knife wounds.

Mas allá, en los masalláses nocheteros y enwhiskados, dos hippies de barba zurda la insultarán con milagros.

(recitado) Las rubias mandragoneras de un zodíaco mulato, le harán trece mordeduras en las líneas de la mano.

(cantado) Y su beso, que era un poco de azafrán y de desgano, se sabrá a página entera ¡como si fuera un asalto!

Setenta veces los siete asombros le habrán robado, le quedarán tres: el mío y los ojos de su gato.

María:

Porteño Gorrión con Sueño, ya nunca me alcanzarás …

Porteño Gorrión con Sueño:

Mi voz, en todas las voces para siempre sentirás.

Far beyond in the far-beyond Night-time whisky sessions, Two hippies with lefty beards Will insult her with miracles.

(spoken) The mandrake blondes of a half-caste zodiac will give her thirteen bites in the lifelines of her hand.

(sung) And her kiss, which was a bit Of both saffron and indifference, Will taste of a full page spread As if it were an armed bank raid!

Seventy times they will have stolen Seven surprises from her, Three will remain: mine And the eyes of her cat.

María:

Sleepy Sparrow of Buenos Aires You’ll never catch me …

Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow:

My voice, in all voices You will always feel.

Cuadro 6: Fuga y misterio (instrumental)

María, tal como presagiara el Porteño Gorrión con Sueño, se marcha de noche de su barrio y atraviesa, silenciosa y alucinada, la ciudad.

Scene 6: Fugue and Mystery (instrumental)

María, as foreseen by the Sleepy Sparrow, leaves her neighbourhood at night and goes through the city silently in a trance.

Cuadro 7: Poema valseado

María:

Un bandoneón que mi tristeza tiene escrita, hoy dos temblores me ha mezclado en la garganta: con gusto a Sur, me dió el temblor de Milonguita, y otro -peor- ¡que sabe a Norte y nadie canta!

Del bandoneón, que huele a sombra de macroses, oigo el arcángel de la prostibulería, frasear su acorde canallesco a siete voces que suenan siete y son -siempre- la mía.

Si hasta el abrazo de morir me siento en celo, y me lo arranco un poco en cada gatería, ¡qué duelo habrá que ya no alcance a ser mi duelo!

¡qué parda trampa que no pueda ser ya mía!

Y seré un resto de ceniza entanguecida; y el medio amor, desde el final, me hará su guiño, y, aún, arderé, por dos monedas, otra vida, sobre un lunático repliegue del corpiño.

Seré más triste, más descarte, más robada que el tango atroz que nadie ha sido todavía; y a Dios daré, muerta y de trote hacia la nada, el espasmódico temblor de cien Marías …

Scene 7: Waltzed Poem

María:

A bandoneón which keeps a record of my sadness

Has today mixed two tremors in my throat: With a taste of the South it gave me the tremor of  Milonguita, And the other a worse one that tastes of the North and nobody sings!

From the bandoneón that smells of the shadow of pimps, I hear the archangel of brotheldom Sound his mean chord in seven voices That sound like seven and are – always – mine.

If I feel on heat even in the grasp of death And I tear it up a bit with each client What mourning will there be that will no longer be my mourning! What dark trap that can no longer be mine!

And I’ll be the remains of tangoed ashes; And half-hearted love, from the end, will wink at me, And I’ll still burn another life for two coins, Over a lunatic fold in my bra.

I’ll be sadder, more discarded, more cheated Than the cruel tango that no-one has yet been; And, dead and trotting off towards nothingness, I’ll give God the trembling spasm of a hundred Marías …

Un nuevo viento de la rosa de los vientos remueve el son de un bandoneón en mi retiro. Y el bandoneón tiene una bala en el aliento para gritar mi muerte al son de un sólo tiro …

Cuadro 8: Tocata

rea

El Duende (al bandoneón):

Goteaban un absorto prestigio de glicinas las llagas de tu fuelle. Y el eco de un rosario tangueado eran tus pliegues, cinchando en la barcina

ternura de un milagro … ¡Qué estafa esas espinas que un día nos vendiste gimiendo en el calvario!

Yo sé que, entre tus voces, secreto y arbitrario, te chaira las lengüetas el Diablo, y que tus sones son gritos afanados del óleo perdulario que un Goya cafonesco pintó contra un sudario, con lágrimas de Judas, de horteras y cabrones.

Yo he visto a tu patota de sardos bandoneones batir las negras alas y arder las botoneras

A new wind from the rose of the winds

Stirs up the sound of a bandoneón in my retreat And the bandoneón has a bullet in its breath

To shout my death with the sound of a single shot …

Scene 8: Lowlife Toccata

The Duende (to the bandoneón):

The wounds of your bellows dripped an absorbed Prestige of wisterias; and your folds were The echo of a tango rosary, working hard on the striped Tenderness of a miracle … What a swindle those thorns were Which you sold us one day, groaning on the Calvary!

I know that among your voices, secret and arbitrary, The Devil sharpens your tongues; and that your sounds

Are cries robbed from the dissolute oil

That a boorish Goya painted against a shroud, With the tears of Judas, of tarts and pimps.

I’ve seen your gang of rogue bandoneons

Beat their black wings and scorch their button panels

a punto de Macumba. Y, allá, en los trascartones del Mal, sangrar del turbio marfil de los botones la voz de la pequeña, ¡con todo el beso afuera!

¿Adónde la enterraste? ¡Me cache! Si ella era el poco misterio que un Dios atribulado, un pobre Dios porteño que amaba a su manera, nos dió, para que siempre -por dentronos siguiera

golpeando una pregunta, ¡que vos nos has matado!

Ahora y en la hora, de atrape y profecía te harán los sordos dedos de un ángel retobado

un solo a dos puñales, por cada fechoría, un solo de Iscariote, con swing de antifonía canera, ¡hasta que escupas, de a dos, los dos teclados!

Entonces con un verso de dientes apretados, un verso en punta de hacha, con sed, total, prohibido, te voy a hacer un tajo triunfal, de lado a lado, para que mueras triste, gritando de parado, en una como náusea de tangos, lo perdido.

As they build up to a ritual; and there, on the back of the card

Of iniquity, bleeding from the stained ivory of the buttons,

The voice of the young girl, with all her kiss showing!

Where did you bury her? Damn me! She was

The little bit of mystery that a troubled God gave us,

A poor God of Buenos Aires who loved in his own way,

So that forever – inside – a question would keep

Striking us – and now you have killed it!

Now and at the hour, of catches and prophecies

The deaf fingers of a rebel angel will play

A solo on two daggers, for each misdeed;

A Judas Iscariot solo, with a swing of jail antiphony

Until you spit out, in twos, the two keyboards!

Then, with a verse of clenched teeth,

A verse like a pickaxe, thirsty, total, forbidden,

I’ll cut you triumphantly, from side to side,

So that you die sad, screaming, on your feet,

In a sort of tango nausea, what we’ve lost.

Cuadro 9: Miserere canyengue de los ladrones antiguos en las alcantarillas

Ladron Antiguo Mayor:

Hoy, que a los poetas y a los pungas y a las locas les saldrá, otra vez, un cuervo blanco por la boca: hoy, que por el dos profundo y fijo de los dados miran, de otro mundo, dos ojitos alunados …

Hoy, que irá a buscar su par por bares espantosos, la cansada pierna de neón de un luminoso; hoy, que la aburrida tangazón de algun cortado un arlequín -que vió la punta del piolín¡se hundió abrazado de un terrón …!

Voces de madamas:

Con restos de antiguos crespones en llamas pondremos candiles las viejas madamas.

Voces de ladrones antiguos:

Atávicos signos de supersticiones tendrán nuestras uñas de antiguos ladrones.

Voces de madamas:

Las viejas madamas, abriendo los lechos, tendremos la hoja de té entre los pechos.

Scene 9: Canyengue Miserere of the Old Gutter Thieves

Chief Old Thief:

Today, when yet again a white raven

Will come out of the mouth of the poets, pickpockets and whores; Today, when through the deep-cut two of the loaded dice

Two little sulky eyes stare, from another world …

Today, when the tired leg of a neon street sign

Tries to find its pair in dingy bars; Today, when the bored bloody-minded tango of a macchiato –

A harlequin – who saw the end of the cord –Sank in the embrace of a sugar lump …!

Voices of the brothel-keepers:

With remains of old black crepe in flames

We old madames will light the lamps.

Voices of the old thieves:

Our old thieves’ fingernails will hang on to Primitive signs of superstitions.

Voices of the brothel-keepers:

We old madames, stripping the beds, Will hold the tea leaf between our breasts.

Voces de ladrones antiguos:

Con un antifaz de charol en la jeta daremos maitines con dos palanquetas.

Voces de madamas y de ladrones:

Que hoy viene la Niña y estarán en flor la yeta y el vino y un Re muy Menor.

Ladron Antiguo Mayor:

Porque estaba escrito con sal en los muros de esta catacumba porteñesca y sola, y abrimos al grito de siete bandolas un séptimo sello lunfardo y maduro.

Porque estaba escrito con tango, este día, y afuera hay olvido y es Martes y es Trece, dará un negro gallo de sangre, tres veces, la pascua canyengue que anuncia a María.

Voces de madamas:

Ya viene la Niña buscando el mulato camino del abismo, montada en su gato.

Ladron Antiguo Mayor:

Son reas candelas de luz en cuclillas sus ojos que alumbran, corriendo las losas, pequeñas auroras polares de cosas, muy viejas, que habitan las alcantarillas.

Voices of the old thieves:

Wearing a lacquered mask on our face

We’ll celebrate Matins with a couple of crowbars.

Voices of brothel-keepers and old thieves:

For the Girl is coming today and misfortune, wine And a very D minor will be in flower.

Chief Old Thief:

Because it was written in salt on the walls

Of this lonesome Buenos Aires catacomb, And to the shout of seven mandolins, we opened A seventh seal of lunfardo slang and of old age;

Because it was written with tango this day And outside there’s oblivion and it’s Tuesday the thirteenth,

A black full-blooded cockerel will crow three times The canyengue Easter which announces María.

Voices of the brothel-keepers:

Here comes the Girl, looking for the mulatto Way to hell, astride her cat.

Chief Old Thief:

Her eyes are like prison candles of squatting light Which shine, running along the stones, Small polar auroras of things, Very old, that live in the gutters.

Le queman las noches detrás de la frente, como húmedas monjas de polvo que zurcen -rezando morbosas milongas- sus dulces, calladas y extrañas ojeras calientes.

Voces de ladrones antiguos:

La Niña ha llegado … La Niña cayó: ¡diremos un cántico en Clave de No!

Ladron Antiguo Mayor (a María):

Desde hoy, para siempre, condeno a tu sombra: que en pena y robada a la mano de Dios, regrese al asfalto, dramática y sola, y arrastre tus culpas, bien hembra y bien sombra, sangrada por siete navajas de Sol.

Voces de madamas:

María torcaza, María en el buche, te harán los martirios su sórdido escruche.

Voces de ladrones antiguos:

María de un peso, ¡María que risa! te trincan los muslos dos manos de tiza …

Voces de madamas:

María de un whisky, María en las rocas, ¡qué gusto -a la vuelta- tendrás en la boca!

The nights scorch her behind her forehead

Like wet nuns of dust – reciting morbid milongas –Who darn the sweet, silent And strange hot rings under her eyes.

Voices of the old thieves:

The Girl has arrived … The Girl has fallen; We shall pray and sing in the Key of No!

Chief Old Thief (to María):

From now and forever, I condemn your shadow, That, in sorrow and stolen from God’s hand, It may return to the asphalt, dramatic, alone, And drag your guilts, as a female and a shadow, Bled by seven knives of sun.

Voices of the brothel-keepers:

María dove, María, in your gut

You’ll undergo the torment of sordid stabbing

Voices of the old thieves:

One-peso María, María what a laugh!

Two chalky hands grasp your thighs.

Voices of the brothel keepers:

Whisky María, María on the rocks, What a taste in your mouth when you come back round!

Voces de ladrones antiguos: María bufosa, María de Amén, y un punto escarlata tendrás en la sien.

Ladron Antiguo Mayor:

Allá va la Sombra de María a su otro infierno … Solo, queda aquí, la vaina rosa de su cuerpo: tiene todo el mal del mundo, en flor, cabal y abierto hasta el final; y sin embargo, ¡el corazón se le ha negado a ser peor!

Voces de madamas y de ladrones (a una vez):

Ladrón Antiguo Mayor: su corazón …¡está muerto!

Text by Horacio Ferrer and Astor Pantaleon Piazzolla

© Editorial Lagos (SADAIC). All rights administered by Warner Chappell Overseas Holdings Ltd

Voices of the old thieves:

María the gun, Amen María, And you’ll have a scarlet mark on your temple.

Chief Old Thief:

There goes María’s shadow to her other hell … Here remains, alone, the pink husk of her body; It holds all the pain of the world, in blossom, complete and open To the end; and yet, the heart Has refused to be worse!

Voices of brothel keepers and old thieves (at the same time):

Chief Old Thief! Her heart … is dead!

Translation © 2017 Ann McFall

‘Yo soy María’ was added after the first run, and in early scores is numbered Cuadro 3b; however in the more recent published score it is numbered 4, and all subsequent scenes are renumbered as they appear here.

MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES

Astor Piazzolla composer (1921–1992)

Horacio Ferrer lyricist (1933–2014)

1 Cuadro 10: Contramilonga a la funerala por la primera muerte de María Funeral Countermilonga for the First Death of María [5:02]

2 Cuadro 11: Tangata del alba Tangata at Dawn [5:06]

3 Cuadro 12: Carta a los árboles y a las chimeneas A Letter to the Trees and the Chimneys [3:04]

4 Cuadro 13: Aria de los analistas Aria of the Psychoanalysts [8:02]

5 Cuadro 14: Romanza del duende poeta y curda Romance of the Drunken Poet Duende [6:14]

6 Cuadro 15: Alegro tangabile [2:58]

7 Cuadro 16: Milonga de la anunciación Milonga of the Annunciation [3:22]

8 Cuadro 17: Tangus Dei [9:52]

Total playing time (CD2) [43:45]

Valentina Montoya Martínez

María/The Shadow of María

Nicholas Mulroy

The voice of a payador/ Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow/ First Psychoanalyst/ A Voice of That Sunday

Juanjo Lopez Vidal

The Duende (narrator)

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Victor Villena

Musical director/bandoneón

Recorded on 18-19 June 2016 at The Tom Fleming Centre, Erskine Stewart’s Melville Schools, Edinburgh

Producer: Paul Baxter

Engineer: Ben Seal

24-bit digital editing: Paul Baxter

24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Cover image: Dolores Molinari, Caos, acrylic on canvas, 2013, fb.com/dolomolinari

María de Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio

Ferrer published by Warner/Chappell Music

Session photography: Steven Allan Images: Design: John Christ

Booklet editor: Henry Howard

Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk

Mr McFall’s Chamber

Cyril Garac, Robert McFall violins

Brian Schiele viola

Su-a Lee cello

Rick Standley double bass

Alison Mitchell flute/piccolo

Malcolm MacFarlane guitar

Phil Alexander piano

Ian Sandilands, Stuart Semple percussion

Speaking Chorus

Lisa Eskuche, Tanja Jacobs, Ann McFall, Rhona McLeod, Doreen Rodgers

Brothel-keepers/spaghetti-kneaders/ Three Marionettes Drunk on Things

Roberto Rabinovich Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow

Pedro Castillo, Gustavo Pardo, Roberto Rabinovich

Old thieves/ Magi-Bricklayers/The Men who Returned from Mystery

Cuadro 10: Contramilonga a la funerala por la primera muerte de María

El Duende:

María de Buenos Aires murió por primera vez; la enteraron – ya era tarde … con sus muecas funerales, un puñal y un cascabel.

Y el alba se atoró con sensación de embolia rea, de cuando fué la Niña, arriando el gesto, rumbo a una calle con velones y magnolias ya con las cosas de morir y el frío puestos.

Y en la esquina donde aún tejen las Mamitas con esplín, dos Malenas de relente -que habían muerto muchas vecesle enseñaron a morir.

Misterio allá, misereteando en la maroma de un jingle obsceno en soledad de sacramento, fueron cinchando la cureña de palomas los doce judas de un cristito temulento.

Por las fábricas, las pibas que hacen la noche a telar, le pusieron, a María, un malvón de poliamida y una orquídea de percal.

Scene 10: Funeral Countermilonga for the First Death of María

The Duende:

María of Buenos Aires died for the first time;

They told her – it was late – with her funeral grimaces,

A knife and a bell.

And the sunrise was choked with a feeling of lazy embolism when the Girl left, hauling down the gesture, towards a street with candles and magnolias already wearing the cold and her death apparel.

And in the corner where the bored grandmas

Still knit bad-temperedly, Two misty versions of the tango ‘Malena’ Which had died many times

Taught her to die.

Mystery there, miserere-ing on the tightrope of an obscene jingle in the solitude of the sacrament, her dove-covered gun carriage was surrounded by the twelve Judases of a little drunken Christ.

In the factories, the girls

That work the looms on the night shift

Laid on María

A plastic geranium And a calico orchid.

Por el escote, le salía una neblina negra y atada con la cinta sucia y triste que un raro beatle destrenzaba, a la sordina, del luto misterioso de sus twistes.

Se murió tanto la Niña cuando se puso a morir, que era una trágica encinta que, llena de muertecitas, ¡no cesaba de parir!

¡Qué cosa! nuestra María murió por primera vez … La enterraron dos mendigas al doblar de las propinas en la borra de un exprés.

Pero en su sola catamufa, zurdo antojo de un loco mimo sobrehumano, a contrayumba de dos pequeñas explosiones de los ojos, echó dos lágrimas de rimmel por la tumba …

María de Buenos Aires lloró por primera vez.

Cuadro 11: Tangata del alba (instrumental)

Ya sepultado el cuerpo de María, comienza el largo via crucis de la Sombra de María. Deambula, perdida, por Buenos Aires.

From her cleavage rose a mist, black and tied with the sad dirty ribbon that a strange Beatle undid, on the quiet, from the mysterious mourning of its twists.

The girl died so much

When she set herself to dying,

That she was a tragic pregnant woman

Who, full of little deaths, Never stopped giving birth!

How terrible! Our María Died for the first time …

Two beggars buried her

To the toll of the clinking tips

In the dregs of an espresso.

But in her lonely gloominess, her clumsy craving for a mad superhuman caress, against the contrayumba rhythm of two small explosions in her eyes, she shed two mascara tears on the tomb …

María of Buenos Aires

Cried for the first time.

Scene 11: Tangata at Dawn (instrumental)

María’s body already buried, the Shadow of María’s long Via Crucis begins. She wanders, lost, through Buenos Aires.

Cuadro 12: Carta a los árboles y a las chimeneas

La sombra de María (dicho): Buenos Aires, Abril de Toda Mi Tristeza.

Queridos Árboles, amadas Chimeneas que dan la sombra y dan la nube de mi barrio:

Mi dolor ha inventado el dolor de otra cruz en la misma raíz;

Todo pasó como sabrán … Que estoy de luto por mi propio recuerdo. En tanto les escribo con la ternura al hombro y llena de esa sola mala palabra que no sé como se dice- sale, otra vez, el Sol para apedrearme el miedo con unas migas de su dulce desayuno, como aquel que tira tres pelotas por veinte contra la cara ensangrentada de la infamia.

Ya la gente fue a vivir; ¡cabe el cielo en un jornal!; loco de azul, a Dios le sobra luz para amasar los pájaros y el pan. Si El otra vez me cierra el ventanal, hartos de mí, los ojos me darán tres vueltas y se irán bizqueando hasta un guiñol de pólvora y de alcohol.

Scene 12: A Letter to the Trees and the Chimneys

The Shadow of María (spoken): Buenos Aires, April of All My Sadness,

Dear Trees and beloved Chimneys

That give shade and cloud in my district:

My pain has invented the pain Of another cross in the same root;

It all happened, as you’ll know … I’m in mourning for the memory of myself. As I write to you –with tenderness on my shoulder and full of that one obscenity which I don’t know how to say –the sun rises again to throw stones at my fear with some crumbs from its sweet breakfast, like the man who shies three balls for twenty pence at the face of bloodstained infamy.

The people went off to live; There is heaven in a wage! Crazy for blue, God has light to spare To knead the birds and the bread. If He, again, should shut me out, Fed up with me, my eyes will turn Three times, and will go Squinting towards a puppet show Of gunpowder and alcohol.

Ya dirán, en el barrio, después: ¡su recuerdo está grave, otra vez …!

Queridos Árboles y amadas Chimeneas: igual que el humo y que la hoja ya perdidos, oirán mi nombre con la sombra en la muerte viva la vez primera y la vez última que un viento -asma del Sur, gusto de Amén, macho en exilio- ¡entre a zapar su Tango Aún por Buenos Aires!

Nada más. No hay adiós: que el adiós nos dolía al principio y no al fín.

Ya en un balcón oloroso a mi voz, póngale dos lutitos de hollín.

La Sombra de María.

Cuadro 13: Aria de los analistas

Coro de analistas: ¡Pasen a ver, caballeros! ¡cosas jamás nunca vistas traeremos los analistas a este circo porteñero! …

¡Pasen a ver!: ¡malabares de un bello remordimiento que hace su trágico intento con siete libriums impares! …

Then they’ll say, in the neighbourhood: ‘Her memory is critically ill again …!’

Dear Trees, beloved Chimneys; just like the smoke and the leaf, already lost, you’ll hear my name, with the shadow of living death, the first and the last time a breeze – asthma of the south, taste of Amen, man in exile – wafts in to work the last seam of its tango in Buenos Aires!

Nothing else. There’s no farewell: because this farewell

Hurt us at the beginning and not at the end.

And on a fragrant balcony, as a sign of mourning, Dab two little marks of soot on my voice.

Scene 13: Aria of the Psychoanalysts

Chorus of psychoanalysts:

Come and see, gentlemen, Things never seen before; We shall bring the psychoanalysts To this Buenos Aires circus …!

Come and see; jugglers

Full of a beautiful remorse

That makes a tragic attempt

With a seven-odd dose of Valium …!

The Shadow of María.

Analista Primero:

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires saca tus sueños al sol, que los sueños tienen picos, ¡rataplán y rataplón!

Coro de analistas:

¡Pasen a ver!: que la vida se enredó en la pena floja, ¡y un Yo porque se le antoja traga angustias encendidas!

¡Aquí está la voltereta de un rencor que, en zapatillas, saca un boom de pesadillas por detrás de la careta!

Analista Primero:

¡Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, saca los sueños al sol, que los sueños tienen filo, ratapleno y rataplón!

Coro de analistas:

¡Pasen a ver!: ¡que asomado por el plano sagital, da un doble olvido mortal un gran recuerdo amaestrado!

¡Pasen a ver!: ¡Adelante!

¡que en la pista y poco a poco va hilando una sombra el copo con culpas de antes de antes! …

First Psychoanalyst:

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires,

Bring out your dreams into the sun, Because dreams have a sharp edge, Rataplan and rataplon.

Chorus of psychoanalysts:

Come and see! How life

Got tangled up with flabby emotion, And how an I, just because it feels like it, Puts up with raging anguish!

Here is the somersault

Of a grudge that, wearing slippers, Produces a run of nightmares From behind its mask!

First Psychoanalyst:

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires,

Bring out your dreams into the sun, Because dreams have a sharp edge, Ratapleno and rataplon.

Chorus of psychoanalysts:

Come and see! How leaning out

On the sagittal plane, A huge conquered memory

Performs a double flip of forgetting!

Come and see! Step up!

In the ring, little by little, The shadow spins the ball

With guilt feelings from long ago!

Analista Primero:

¡Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, saca los sueños al sol, que este sueño es de María, rataplín y rataplón!

Coro de analistas:

Cámara uno: ¡al recuerdo!

Cámara dos: ¡a la conciencia!

Que pongan un decorado con trapecios de tiniebla, que la niña hará su salto vestida de memoria negra.

Y el Analista Primero le pide cuatro piruetas.

Analista Primero:

Cerrá los ojos María, que así en tus ojos cabrán un patio ñato y un canto que en ese patio se oirá.

¿Es el llanto de tu madre?

La Sombra de María: No lo siento. Dicen, de ella, que tenía en la cintura una gran sensiblería, como de silla vacía, y que fregaba estrellas sucias para afuera. Pero que nunca lloraba. Eso cuentan los que estaban de ella al tanto.

First Psychoanalyst:

Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires,

Bring out your dreams to the sun, This dream is María’s Rataplin and rataplon.

Chorus of psychoanalysts:

Camera one: memory!

Camera two: consciousness!

Set up a scene

With a trapeze of darkness, The girl will do her jump

Dressed in black memory

And the First Psychoanalyst Commands her to do four pirouettes.

First Psychoanalyst:

Close your eyes, María, So that there’s room in your mind’s eye For a flat patio and for a song That will be heard on that patio.

Is it your mother’s crying?

The Shadow of María:

I can’t hear it. They say she had around her waist the sentimentality of an empty chair and that she scrubbed dirty stairs for others but that she never cried. So say those who knew her.

Fue un Viernes, -y no fue santoy ya me lo acuerdo mal.

It was a Friday – and not Good Friday –And I can hardly remember.

Analista Primero (cantado):

Abrí los sueños, María, que así en tus sueños habrá una fragua con dos manos que en esa fragua hacen pan.

(dicho) ¿Son las manos de tu padre?

La Sombra de María:

No sé. Pero de él se ha recordado que jugaba al pase inglés con dos cortafierros cargados con sangre dura, y que perdía cuantas veces lo quería. Eso juran los que entonces le ganaban con sietes y onces de risa.

Fue un Miércoles de ceniza, y ya me lo acuerdo mal.

Analista Primero: (cantado)

Cerrá tus ojos María que así en dos ojos verás, un grito y un beso izquierdo que en este grito se va.

¿Es ése tu primer beso?

La Sombra de María:

No sabría. Pero cuentan que en él cabía tanta tristeza como la que hubo en el Jesús que no tuvo para leños y se pintó una cruz en el lomo. Y que, ese beso, otro día, se hizo

First Psychoanalyst (sung):

Open up your dreams, María

So that in your dreams there will be A forge and two hands Which make bread in that forge.

(spoken) Are they your father’s hands?

The Shadow of María:

I don’t know. But they say of him that he used to play craps with two chisels loaded with hardened blood, and that he lost as many times as he wanted. That’s what the winners swore, with their laughing sevens and elevens.

It was on an Ash Wednesday And I can hardly remember.

First Psychoanalyst: (sung)

Close your eyes, María

And in two eyes you will see A scream and a sinister kiss That runs away into that scream.

Is that your first kiss?

The Shadow of María:

I wouldn’t know. But they say that it could hold as much sadness as there was in the Jesus who could not afford the wood and painted a cross on his back. And that this kiss, some other day, had

hacer un pequeño aborto cerezo en cada labio. Eso callan los que saben de ese beso y aún lo gozan.

Yo, entonces, era una rosa; y ya me lo acuerdo mal.

Analista Primero:

Abrí los sueños, María, que así en tus sueños cabrán un whisky y dos golpes rubios que desde el fondo se oirán

¿Es tu corazón que llama?

La Sombra de María:

Dificilmente. Mi corazón cortado en cuatro, está -dicen- sepeliado en las cuatro troneras de un billar robado. El que ahora llevo puesto se lo compré a una encorazonadora que tenía corazonería de viejo en un paisaje terraja, y vendía corazoncitos tristeros de baraja francesa y de conejo, de tatuaje de marinero con pereza, de rima de canción de cuna y de alcaucil. A mí, me puso uno que es de vista y no de lástima, recortado del mandil de un bandoneonista; y con una agujita de estaño y de hilo de humo castaño, me lo bordó en el vientre. Dijo que eso era lo que convenía para quien, como yo, soy una sombra María, y ya por sombra -solo sombra- seré sombra y seré virgen para siempre.

a small cherry abortion on each lip. This is what the people who know about this kiss, and still enjoy it, do not say.

I was then a rose; And I can hardly remember.

First Psychoanalyst:

Open up your dreams, María,

So that your dreams will then hold

A whisky and two blonde blows That will be heard right from the back.

Is it your heart that calls?

The Shadow of María

Hardly. My heart, cut out in four pieces – they say – is buried in the four pockets of a stolen pool table. The one on me now I bought from a heart-shop attendant who kept a second-hand heart store in a good-for-nothing part of town; she sold little saddish hearts of French cards and of rabbits, of tattoos of a lazy sailor, of a lullaby rhyme and of an artichoke. She put one on me which looks good, and which is alright, cut out of a bandoneon player’s apron; and, with a little tin needle and some thread of brown smoke, she embroidered it on my stomach. She said that was the right thing for someone who, like myself, is a shadow María; as a shadow – just a shadow – I’ll be a shadow and a virgin forever.

Lo dijo mientras cosía

¡y ya me lo acuerdo mal!

Analista Primero:

¡Cubrí tu pecho, María, con un puñado de sal, que adentro te mira un cero, y el cero te va a llorar!

La Sombra de María:

Del numeroso gris de anteayer ya no me acuerdo más que de aquel misterio cruel que me gritó: ¡Nacé! y cuando entre a vivir, se sonrió … Y al fin al verme así, tan última y tan yo, mordiéndose, gritó: ¡Morí! …

Cuadro 14: Romanza del duende poeta y curda

El Duende:

Aquí, en este mágico bar talismanero ¡se sabe casi todo! … lo cuentan, de escolaso las sotas y los reyes, ventrílocuos cabreros de cosas que el Destino fermenta entre los mazos.

She said so while she sewed –I can hardly remember.

First Psychoanalyst:

Cover your breasts, María, With a fistful of salt, Because inside a zero is looking at you And the zero will cry for you!

The Shadow of María:

Of the endless greys of the past I can only remember

That one cruel mystery that screamed at me: ‘Be born!’

And when I made my entrance and started to live It smiled …

And then finally, when it saw me like this, So with-it and so myself, It bit itself and shrieked: ‘Drop dead!’ …

Scene 14: Romance of the Drunken Poet Duende

The Duende:

Here, in this magical, lucky bar, almost all is known! … It’s told in a gambling game by the jacks and kings, gangster ventriloquists of things that Fate brews up between the card decks.

Aquí, pegado al ñato revés de cada vaso nos mira el ojo quieto y abierto de locura, que algún Discepolín que quiso verle los pasos al diablo, cosió con un hilito de amargura.

Voces de Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas:

Desde que esta copa que el Duende, por triste, se está fajando, tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas, lo campaneamos.

El Duende:

Aquí, donde mañana sabe a antaño, buscando a Dios yo ví, de escalofrío, que estaba en lo que quiero y en lo que extraño, cortado a esa sazón, como el tamaño del grano da el tamaño del estío.

Aquí, en cada botella, cabe un río; y al fondo de ese río hay otro estaño; y, en curda, en ese estaño, un verso mío, y, en él, la plata triste de otro río que me hizo Duende, me hizo … ¡hace mil años!

Voces de Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas:

Al Duende -que en la operita venía el cuento contandose le ha perdido una sombra y, en curda, la va llamando.

Right here, stuck to the flat bottom of each glass we’re watched by the quiet open eye of madness, that some Discepolín who wanted to see the devil’s paces, sewed with a fine thread of bitterness.

Voices of the Three Marionettes Drunk on Things: From this glass from which the Duende, Is gloomily gulping, we, Three Marionettes Drunk on Things, Are watching him.

The Duende:

Here, where tomorrow tastes of the past, looking for God, I saw, in the space of a shiver, that he was in what I love and in that which I miss, cut, at that time, as the size of the grain gives the length of the summer.

Here in each bottle there’s room for a river; and at the bottom of this river there’s another bar; and drunk, in this bar, one of my poems, and in it, the sad silver of another river that made me a Duende, made me … a thousand years ago!

Voices of the Three Marionettes Drunk on Things: The Duende – who in the operita Came along to tell the tale –Has lost a shadow And, in his drunkenness, keeps calling it.

El Duende:

De mí, jugado a vos, te mando este retazo de tango con ojeras, que allá en tu pena entero, removerá en la amarga ceniza de tus pasos la bronca enamorada de un canto compañero.

De mí, y a donde me oigas, irán hasta tu cero, dos lucas de rubionas, yironas y Melatos, a echar sobre tu sombra un fato de luceros. (¡Los huesos de Olivari conocen de este fato!).

Voces de Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas:

¡Pobre Duende! Anda por esa sombrita, desesperado: y nos pide a los compinches que a ella llevemos su llanto.

El Duende:

De mí, y en donde estés, con una fuerza de locos, como un himno estrafalario, tan hondo sonará el concierto mersa que un viejo ciego, a vos, te hará en la terza morena de su reo estradivario.

De mí, y en donde estés, pondré un plenario de dulces duendecitos que retuerza la niebla de tu piel; y un tabernario rumor de nazarenos carcelarios dirá tu Anunciación en parla inversa.

The Duende:

From me, betting on you, I send you this fragment of tango, with bags under its eyes, that in your full pain will call up again the loving anger of a friendly song in the bitter ashes of your footsteps.

From me, and wherever you hear me, two thousand blondes, street walkers and pimps will walk to your nothingness to cast a job lot of stars upon your shadow. (Olivari’s bones know all about this business!)

Voices of the Three Marionettes Drunk on Things: Poor Duende! He’s looking for that Little shadow, desperate, And asks us, his friends, To take his grieving to her.

The Duende:

From me, and wherever you are, with a strength born of madness and like an eccentric hymn which will resonate deeply, an old blind man will play a low-life concert for you on the third string of his dodgy Stradivarius.

From me, and wherever you are, I’ll set up a meeting of sweet little Duendes who can twist the haze of your skin; and a drunken buzz of jailed penitents will recite your Annunciation in back slang.

Voces de Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas:

Iremos todos, Don Duende, los puntos de este curdato a llevarle a la Pequeña de parte suya, un milagro.

El Duende:

Y así que vos renazcas, sabras qué trampa tienen la yerba en su barrica, y el cielo del agujero que mira del zapato; la lluvia que no viene y un sorbo de esa lluvia, y el tiempo en su tiempero …

¡Y así María! ¡Así, María! ¡Asi! por cada quiero y las nueve lunas locas y en celo de un infarto de luz, te harán -en torno- los guiños sensibleros de un baile amanecido de risas y de partos …

Voces de Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas: Ya vamos, Sombra María, con el Diciembre y los cantos que está amasándote el Duende con el polen de este estaño.

El Duende:

Y así, por un silencio de corchea vendrá -por fin- tu día: un alazano Domingo, que te hará con las más feas hojitas de un laurel de olor, la rea y angélica belleza de sus ramos.

Voices of the Three Marionettes Drunk on Things: We will all go, Master Duende, The punters of this drinking club, To take the wee Girl

A miracle on your behalf.

The Duende:

And as soon as you’re reborn, you’ll know what tricks there are in the maté in its gourd and the sky from the hole which gazes up from a shoe, the rain that doesn’t arrive and a sip of that rain, and time in its time - pot …

And so, María! So, María! So! For every ‘I love’ nine crazy moons on heat from your stroke of light will make you the amorous winks of an all-night-long dance of laughter and childbirth …

Voices of the Three Marionettes Drunk on Things: Here we come, Shadow María, With December and the songs That the Duende is kneading for you With the pollen of this bar.

The Duende:

And thus, in a quaver’s silence your day willfinally - come. A chestnut Sunday will make for you, with the ugliest leaves of a perfumed laurel, the rambling, angelic beauty of its branches.

Tu día, nacerá del meridiano cachuzo del umbral en donde hornea su misa, algún poeta a contramano. Así sea, querida, de cristiano. Así, de tuyo y nuestro … ¡Que así sea!

Your day will be born from a worn-out meridian of the threshold where a poet bakes his mass back to front. So be it, my dear, in good faith. So be it, yours and ours … So be it!

Cuadro 15: Allegro tangabile (instrumental )

Scene 15: Allegro tangabile (instrumental)

Las Tres Marionetas Borrachas de Cosas salen junto con sus compinches del mágico bar para llevarle de parte del Duende a la Sombra de María el milagro de la fecundidad. Una sinfonía de marionetas, angelitos de barro cocido, chaplines, murguistas, discépolínes gana enloquecida la calle de Buenos Aires, buscando el germen de un hijo para la Sombra de María.

The Three Marionettes Drunk on Things, along with their friends, leave the magical bar and take to the Shadow of María, on behalf of the Duende, the miracle of fertility. A symphony of marionettes, clay angels, Chaplins, street musicians and Discépolíns run amok in the streets of Buenos Aires, looking for the seed of a child for the Shadow of María.

Cuadro 16: Milonga de la anunciación

La Sombra de María:

Tres marionetas -chuecas y locasque una violeta en la boca me hincaron ayer, con un cuchillo en los dientes, por el revés de mis caderas tordillas, zurciendo van un gran remiendo en flor de hinojo y de sisal ¡Ay! …

Scene 16: Milonga of the Annunciation

The Shadow of María:

Three marionettes –

Bow-legged and mad –

Who shoved a violet into my mouth yesterday With a knife in their teeth, go sewing

A big patch of fennel and sisal flowers Along the back of my grey hips Ow! …

Flaco y en banda -¡tan cadenero!me anda un Jesús chapalenado, de cuarta, en la voz, un canyenguito sobón con un compás de punto cruz; y un dulce barro torcaz de Cruz del Sur que hoy me ha puesto a temblar.

Y un angelito de terracota, tuerto del grito en la rota viudez de un pretil, mascando un salmo en sanata, con un jazmín me ató un solcito de leche sobre el sutién, ¡que dos espasmos de luz tengo atrás de la piel!

¡Dale María!

Si nueve llantos son todo el pardo misterio que habia que ver, ¡qué loco intento de espiga que vas a hacer!, ¡qué dura rama celeste te va a crujir!

¡Dale que está al venir!

¡Dale que duele bien!

¡Ay! …

Skinny and lost –

Dragging his chains –

A tawdry Jesus is going along splashing; in his voice

There’s a little lazy canyengue tango

With a beat

Of cross stitch; And a sweet clay mud

Of the Southern Cross

That today has got me trembling.

And a terracotta Angel, Injured in the cry of the worn-out widowhood of a railing, Mumbling an unintelligible psalm, tied a little sun of milk

On my bra along with a jasmine flower, So that I have two spasms of light Beneath my skin!

Come on, María!

If nine sobs

Are all the dark mystery there was to see, What a mad attempt at fruition you will make! What a hard bluish branch will rustle for you! Come on, it’s about to come! Come on, it really hurts in the right way! Ow! …

Tengo atorada

tanta ternura

¡que de una sola ternura a Dios puedo parir!

¡Y si es que nadie ya quiere de mí nacer, en el rebozo robado de algun Chaplin, entre mis brazos daré de mamar a un botín!

Cuadro 17: Tangus Dei

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo, y al día los sacan del Domingario una novia sin Domingo y el penúltimo borracho.

El Duende:

Hoy es Domingo: Laurel con leche. Desde el badajo de su cuchara da un capuchino tres campanadas: tras los misales, pican motetes las derrotadas y alegres nalgas de las matronas: Laurel con ajo.

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo, y las brujas se espiran, porque asomados del tuco les tiran soles los chicos y los payasos.

I’ve got so much Frustrated tenderness

That with only one bit of tenderness I can give birth to God!

And if nobody wants me to give birth to them, Wrapped in the stolen cape of some Charlie Chaplin, Between my arms I shall Breast-feed a boot!

Scene 17: Tangus Dei

A Voice of That Sunday:

Today is Sunday, and the day Is taken out of its Sunday corner By a bride without a Sunday And by the last drunkard but one.

The Duende:

Today is Sunday; Laurel with milk. From the clapper of its teaspoon, a cappuccino rings three peals behind the missals, the worn-out but exultant midwives’ bottoms grind motets. Laurel with garlic.

A Voice of That Sunday: Today is Sunday, and the witches Go away, because peeping Out of the tuco sauce

Children and clowns throw suns at them.

El Duende:

Hoy es Domingo, laurel con fiaca. Domingamente rueda un bostezo. Y, en el bostezo, dan las muchachas la buena nueva del buen mal paso que arde en la hilacha pródiga y tensa de sus bluyines: Laurel caliente.

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo; y un coro de mil domingos muchachos desde el orsai dice un viejo romance en cuatro dos cuatro.

Voces de las amasadoras de tallarines: A las amasadoras de tallarines algo nos pasa:

¿Por qué es que se nos retiemblan las manos duras entre la masa?

Voces de Tres Albañiles Magos:

¿Qué gusto le han mezclado los copetines, que tienen una patota de estrellitas, en donde estaban las aceitunas?

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo y atorran hasta los séptimos tangos; será, sin embargo el día del más antiguo trabajo.

The Duende:

Today is Sunday; Laurel with laziness. Sundaylike, a yawn rolls by. And in the yawn, the girls give the good news of the good irrevocable step which burns in the taut and extravagant thread of their blue jeans; hot laurel.

A Voice of That Sunday:

Today is Sunday, and a choir Of a thousand boy Sundays From the offside tells an old story In four-two-four formation.

Voices of the spaghetti-kneaders: Something strange is happening to us, the spaghetti-kneaders; Why are our tough hands trembling inside the dough?

Voices of the Three Magi-Bricklayers:

What have they put in the drinks that There’s a gang of little stars where the olives used to be?

A Voice of That Sunday:

Today is Sunday, and even The seventh tangos sleep; It will, however, be the day For the oldest profession.

El Duende:

Hoy es Domingo: Laurel y azares. ¿Qué Buenos Aires le echó los naipes a este Domingo que así, en la altura pampero arriba, tres profetitas locos laburan juntando ramos de un nuevo aroma: Laurel del aire?

The Duende:

Today is Sunday; Laurel and chance. What ‘buenos aires’ dealt the cards to this Sunday so that up high, above the Pampas winds, three little mad prophets toil gathering bunches of a new aroma; Laurel and air?

Voces de Tres Albañiles Magos:

Y la marca de sus uñas se ve en el cemento armado.

El Duende:

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo y me han dicho que hasta el muñeco de trapo que cuelga en los colectivos viene a lo alto mirando.

El Duende:

Hoy es Domingo: Laurel servido. Qué extraña siembra dió este Domingo, que allá en lo alto de un piso treinta, sola en la sola cal de un andamio, reparturienta de nueve asombros, hierve una sombra: ¡Laurel con hembra!

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Hoy es Domingo; y a punta de diente, como peleando allá esa sombra por dentro sus lutos se esta lavando.

Voces de las amasadoras de tallarines:

Se le abisma la cintura la cincha de un nudo zaino.

A Voice of That Sunday:

Today is Sunday; and it is said That even the rag doll That hangs in the buses Is gazing upwards.

The Duende:

Today is Sunday; laurel served up. What strange seed this Sunday strewed, so that high up there on the thirtieth floor, alone amongst the whitewash of a scaffolding, rebirth of nine surprises, a shadow seethes: Laurel with woman!

A Voice of That Sunday:

Today is Sunday; and using Her teeth, as if fighting, This shadow is washing The inside of her mourning.

Voices of the spaghetti-kneaders:

In the abyss of her waist

The girdle of a dark knot.

Cuánta cosa, uno por uno, le retoña los ovarios fecundos de mil dolores en seducción de sopapo. ¡Si parece que tuviera hasta el nombre embarazado!

¡Que retemblor le sacude la entraña, como si echando setenta reencarnaciones de un jesusito nonato, se arrancara de los huesos del vientre, setenta clavos!

(La sombra de María, comienza a cantar un villancico a los lejos.)

El Duende

Dos angelotes parteros la trincan de bruces, cuando le dan de forceps los fierros del pesebre hormigonado.

¡Cómo alumbra para adentro! ¡Qué luz le chaira en el tallo! Qué clara lastimaduracruza de muerte y de orgasmo - le enciende por las caderas como un canyengue de astros.

¡Fuerza María!: que nace y nace, naciendo tanto, que te pare hasta el olvido, y te empuja entre las manos y en la raíz y en la rabia y te

Voices of the Three Magi-Bricklayers: And the scratch of her nails

Is seen in the reinforced concrete.

The Duende:

So many things, one by one, burgeon from her ovaries, fertile with a thousand pains, seduced with slaps. It seems that even her name is pregnant! What trembling shakes her insides, as if by delivering seventy reincarnations of an unborn little Jesus, she were drawing seventy nails out of the bones of her womb!

(The shadow of María starts singing a Christmas carol from far away)

The Duende

Two midwife angels hold her face down as they use as forceps

The reinforcing rods of the concrete crib.

What a light it sheds inside! What a sharp light is shed on her stalk! What a clear wound, half way between orgasm and death – lights up on her hips like a canyengue of stars. Come on, María! It’s being born, and born, and it’s being born so much that it takes you to oblivion and it pushes you into its hands and in its root and

renace a pedazos, por las puntas de otras trenzas, por las grietas de los labios, por el gesto, ¡y por las ganas de nacerte hasta el cansancio!

¡Cuánta Navidad tenías atragantada en los años! qué zafra brava, María, zafra de partos, tu parto …

Voces de las amasadoras de tallarines:

A quién recién ha nacido nada le sobra y no tiene cuna.

Voces de Tres Albañiles Magos:

Su padre que es un carpintero de obra ha de hacerle una.

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Desde lo alto del Domingo los Tres Albañiles Magos, en la arena de esa cuna un guiño rosa han dejado.

Voces de Tres Albañiles Magos:

¿Por qué es que los angelitos todos llorando a encurdarse han ido?

Voces de las amasadoras de talarines:

¡Porque ese niño no es niño, Jesus! ¡Que es niña: niña ha nacido!

in its rage, makes you be born again in bits, in the tips of other plaits, in the cracks of those lips, in the gesture and in the desire to give birth to the point of exhaustion!

How much Christmas you had Choking you up for years! What a splendid harvest, María, Harvest of childbirth, your childbirth …

Voices of the spaghetti-kneaders:

The newly born has nothing to spare And has no crib.

Voices of the Three Magi-Bricklayers: Her father, who is a carpenter, Will make a crib for the child.

A Voice of That Sunday: From the summit of Sunday The Three Magi-Bricklayers Have left a pink wink On the sand of the crib.

Voices of the Three Magi-Bricklayers: Why is it that the little angels, all of them crying, Have gone off to get drunk?

Voices of the spaghetti-kneaders:

Because that child is not a boy, Jesus! It’s a Girl! A girl has been born!

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

La Niña tuvo otra niña que es ella misma y no es tanto. Quieren final y principio ser gotas del mismo llanto.

Voces de los espectadores:

¡Por Dios!: Los espectadores también queremos saber, si la letra de este tango ya ha sido o esta por ser.

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

En los ojos de la niña el tiempo está bien robado: por ayer y por mañana María la han bautizado.

El Duende:

Pero aquellos hombres, los rudos maestros de mi tristería, que saben del mudo arremango que cabe a ese nombre, cuando hay pena llena sobre el aire overo de las curderias, lo nombran, apenas, ladrando a su recuerdo la sombra de los tangos que ya fueron y no existen todavía.

Una Voz de Ese Domingo: Nuestra María de Buenos Aires …

A Voice of That Sunday: The girl had another girl Who is her and yet not so. They want, finally and initially, To be tears of the same sob.

Voices of the spectators: Good God! The spectators also want to know If the words of this tango have been or are about to be.

A Voice of That Sunday:

In the eyes of the girl Time’s been stolen; Yesterday and tomorrow She has been christened María.

The Duende:

But those men, the rough masters of my sadness, who know about the quiet confidence which that name evokes, when full grief falls upon the thick fug of the barsgive it a name, uncertainly, calling out in its memory the shadow of old tangos which are both no more and still to come.

A Voice of That Sunday: Our María Of Buenos Aires …

El Duende:

De olvido eres entre todas las mujeres …

Una Voz de Ese Domingo:

Nuestra María de Buenos Aires …

El Duende:

Presagio eres entre todas las mujeres …

Una Voz de Ese Domingo: Nuestra María …

El Duende:

De olvido eres entre todas las mujeres …

Una Voz de Ese Domingo: Nuestra María …

El Duende:

Presagio eres entre todas las mujeres …

Una Voz de Ese Domingo: María …

Text by Horacio Ferrer and Astor Pantaleon Piazzolla © Editorial Lagos (SADAIC). All rights administered by Warner Chappell Overseas Holdings Ltd

The Duende:

Forgotten art thou Amongst all women …

A Voice of That Sunday: Our María Of Buenos Aires …

The Duende: Portent art thou Amongst all women …

A Voice of That Sunday: Our María …

The Duende: Forgotten art thou Amongst all women …

A Voice of That Sunday: Our María …

The Duende: Portent art thou Amongst all women …

A Voice of That Sunday: María …

Translation © 2017 Ann McFall

© Juan Jose Lopez

Known for its innovative approach to programming and stylistic plurality, Mr McFall’s Chamber was formed in 1996 as a response to the narrowing demographic for classical music in Scotland at that time. Initially an ad hoc string quartet, gradually adding a bass player and pianist as well as other, occasional members, the group played at first to nightclub audiences and offered a mixture of types of music, some popular, some way-out. Subsequently it took its bohemian approach and some, at least, of its bohemian audience back into the concert hall, creating music events which combined contemporary classical pieces with jazz, folk, progressive rock, cabaret and tango, all presented in a style which places the emphasis on informality and enjoyment.

Mr McFall’s Chamber has collaborated with a number of singer-songwriters, including Michael Marra and Valentina Montoya Martínez (both of whom have recorded CDs for Delphian with the group). It is also dedicated to commissioning new work from both well-known and unknown composers, and has premiered and toured pieces by James MacMillan, Gavin Bryars, Eddie McGuire, Kenneth Dempster, Cecilia McDowall, Chick

Lyall, Phil Bancroft, Fraser Fifield, Tim Garland and many more. Two McFall’s commissions, Martin Suckling’s What shall I give? and Martin Kershaw’s Closing In, were shortlisted as finalists for the 2011 BASCA British Composer Awards.

The group has collaborated with artists and animators in multimedia projects, and has established many educational projects around Scotland, including North Ayrshire’s ‘Tango Fest’, launched in December 2012, in which more than three hundred young string pupils performed a programme of traditional tango numbers with the group. In 2014 Mr McFall’s Chamber toured and recorded five songs by classical singer-songwriter Errollyn Wallen, and a new set of songs by Errollyn was commissioned for October 2015 as part of an ambitious curated programme of music from Scotland and the Caribbean, with support from a prestigious PRS for Music Foundation award.

In December 2014, Mr McFall’s Chamber was named in The List’s ‘Hot 100’ countdown of Scotland’s top hundred cultural icons.

Valentina Montoya Martínez was born in Chile, the daughter of a former political prisoner and a political refugee. Her exiled family arrived in Britain in 1977. She grew up surrounded by the folk music of her native land –a central part of her life in Britain and often the focal point of a small community of exiles. She began to accompany her own singing on guitar when she was twelve, and soon began performing at Chilean cultural events. She also developed a love of Argentine tango, from the many recordings her mother had brought over from Chile. Her vocal training, she says, ‘was the struggle for survival in a foreign land, the fight against cultural invisibility and the love of my people and our musical traditions’.

She graduated in Comparative American Studies from Warwick University in 1994. She then spent two years teaching English and Drama at the University of Puebla in Mexico, as well as singing in local venues and cafes. On her return to the UK she undertook a master’s degree on the work of Víctor Jara, one of her main inspirations, and then set off for Edinburgh, where she met David Russell, an

accomplished Scottish guitarist and sound engineer. Together they formed their folk band ‘Valentina and Voces Del Sur’ and made their debut at the old Bongo Club in Edinburgh, where a chance encounter with the Scottish ensemble Mr McFall’s Chamber led to the beginning of an ongoing and fruitful collaboration singing tango.

To date, Valentina and Voces Del Sur’s performances have included numerous venues and festivals in the UK, with concerts in Portugal, Chile and Mexico. The band have also supported Buena Vista Social Club’s Eliades Ochoa, as well as legendary Chilean folk group Quilapayún during their visits to Scotland. Valentina and David have recently released their newest album, Daughter of Exile, the first of two recordings which reflect on Valentina’s early memories of exile. At the heart of this project is a poetic dialogue between singer Valentina and the child that she was when her family left Chile to escape Pinochet’s military dictatorship. What does the little girl say to her future self? She whispers her dreams and favourite things to be woven into song.

‘Cántame una canción que me ayude en el camino!’ (‘Sing me a song which helps me along the way!’) says the child. The adult sings.

Born in Liverpool, Nicholas Mulroy studied at Clare College, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music. He regularly appears with leading ensembles throughout Europe, including the Monteverdi Choir with Sir

John Eliot Gardiner, Les Musiciens du Louvre with Marc Minkowski, Les concerts d’Astrée with Emmanuelle Haïm, the Gabrieli Consort with Paul McCreesh, as well as in recent concerts with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Koelner Akademie, Dunedin Consort, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Wrocław Philharmonic and at the BBC Proms and the Spitalfields Festival. Other conductors he has worked with include Laurence Cummings, Trevor Pinnock, Sir Colin Davis and Nicholas Kraemer. On stage he has worked with Glyndebourne Festival Opera and on Tour, Opéra Comique Paris, Théâtre Capitole de Toulouse and at the Opéra de Lille.

Recordings for Delphian include the Stravinsky Cantata with the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (DCD34164) and music by Gavin Bryars with Mr McFall’s Chamber (DCD34058). Other recordings include a

Gramophone Award-winning Messiah with the Dunedin Consort, and releases with Exaudi, The King’s Consort and I Fagiolini. He recently featured on two versions of the St John Passion singing the arias for Stephen Layton and Polyphony and Evangelist and arias for John Butt and the Dunedin Consort.

He is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and a Musician in Residence of Girton College, Cambridge.

The singer and producer Juanjo Lopez Vidal was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At twelve, he taught himself to play guitar and started singing with his older brother. In 1979, their duo was signed by RCA Victor, where they worked with Piazzolla’s guitarist Horacio Malvicino and under the artistic direction of Grammy Award winner Julian Navarro.

In 1989, Juanjo toured Spain, later settling in Granada where he performed and worked as an engineer/producer and consultant for all the international music festivals in the city, before relocating to the United Kingdom. He was co-founder and board member of the Music Producers Guild (UK). During his career as a producer and engineer, Juanjo has worked with some of the most influential tango

directors, and most importantly for him, some of the best singers of tango’s Golden Age, including Alberto Podesta, Paya Dias, Roberto Goyeneche, Roberto Rufino, Carlos Acuña, Jorge Valdez and many others, not least Horacio Ferrer. These experiences have given him a unique perspective on the work of the legends and long-established interpreters of the genre.

After a long break, he recorded his comeback album Tango de Bute in Buenos Aires in 2012, featuring music director Carlos Buono on bandoneón, Juan Pugliano on piano and Daniel Cucci on double bass.

Born in Argentina in 1979, Victor Villena has been hailed by the international press as one of the world’s leading bandoneón players.

The New York Times said ‘ Mr Villena’s bandoneon [expresses] extremes of earthiness and ethereality, an emotional universe unto itself,’ calling him ‘A master of the instrument’. In 2013 he released his first and to date most important solo recording Bandoneón Ecléctico, which was selected to be part of Música Argentina’s El Arte de Bandone ón series, and nominated among the best Argentine recordings of 2014.

He participated in the televised concert 1000 Years of Music in 60 Minutes on FrenchGerman ARTE TV with Frank Braley, Henri Demarquette and Olivier Charlier. He has taken the part of musical director for Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires three times, in 2007, 2013 and 2016 in performances at the National Theatre of Lisbon, and the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. Since 2013 he has been Official Bandoneón Player for Ute Lemper on her world tour.

Biography photo credits:

Valentina Montoya Martínez, © Sofia Sequeiros

Nicholas Mulroy, © Raphaelle Photography

Juanjo Lopez Vidal, © Robert Slade

Victor Villena, © Marc Marnie

La Pasionaria

Valentina Montoya Martínez, Mr McFall’s Chamber DCD34120

Valentina Montoya Martínez’s songs of life as a Chilean exile are complemented by the music of the tango nuevo. ‘La Pasionaria’ was the nickname of Dolores Ibárruri, a Basque Communist leader during the Spanish Civil War. Likewise both engaged and passionate, the songs brought together here – including Valentina’s deeply personal odes to her late mother and to the political activist Sola Sierra – pay tribute to the private and public lives of women across Spain and Latin America.

‘hugely engaging ... A glorious, loveable disc’

— The Arts Desk, August 2013

Michael Marra: live on tour 2010

Michael Marra, Mr McFall’s Chamber DCD34092

Robert McFall writes: When we toured with Michael in 2010 we had, of course, no idea that he would only be with us for a further two years. Looking back on it I’m hugely relieved that we made these recordings when we could, that we helped capture what a Michael Marra performance was like, down to his impeccably presented and hilarious introductions. For some time before the collaboration some of us had been faithful fans of his, and we feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be, for an all too brief few weeks, his backing band.

‘Aficionados will know Marra’s utterly idiosyncratic material ... but the sympathetic McFall’s settings bring a new, almost cinematic element, managing to complement the frequent quirkiness of these songs while emphasising the compassion which glows amid the surrealism’

— The Scotsman, November 2010

The Okavango Macbeth

Edinburgh Studio Opera & Mr McFall’s Chamber / Michael Bawtree DCD34096 (2 discs)

The Macbeth story as played out in a troupe of baboons? This fanciful idea inspired writer Alexander McCall Smith and composer Tom Cunningham with the idea for this unique chamber opera, set in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. It centres on the efforts of an ambitious female baboon, Lady Macbeth, to encourage her husband to murder the dominant baboon, Duncan. The opera was premiered in Botswana, in The No 1 Ladies’ Opera House which McCall Smith helped found as a venue for the many talented local singers there, before transferring to this, the first of two Scottish productions to date.

’Small-scale perfection’— The Arts Desk, January 2012

Solitudes: Baltic Reflections

Mr McFall’s Chamber

DCD34156

No one knows quite when tango was established in Finland, but the style has a long history there – still little known to outsiders – and combines rhythmic interest and yearning melody with a distinctively Nordic melancholy. In this ingeniously curated programme, two Finnish tangos from the 1950s and a tango-based work by Finnish classical composer Aulis Sallinen are woven into a bold tapestry of music from the Eastern Baltic seaboard. Longing, sadness, and a heightened sense of nature infuse all of these works, which also reveal intriguing stylistic connections. These original compositions are complemented by Robert McFall’s own sensitive arrangements for a core McFall’s line-up of five strings and piano, and the programme culminates in a truly unique version of Sibelius’s famous Finlandia Hymn.

‘Full marks for originality of concept and for execution’

— Gramophone, September 2015

Mr McFall’s Chamber on Delphian

Dolores Molinari, Para mi mamá, acrylic on canvas, 2013, fb.com/dolomolinari

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