TICKETS  
Stalls 18€
Laterals 15€

USUAL DISCOUNTS (for tickets purchased at the CCB Box Office)
25% discount for under 25 and over 65 years old (only for 2nd Stalls and Circles)
5€ Tickets – Students and  show business professionals (limited number of tickets)
20% discount for groups from 10 to 50 persons

     Small Auditorium Plan

Music and libretto by ALEXANDRE DELGADO
from the play O TEMPO FEMININO by MIGUEL ROVISCO

SOUNDS OF AN IMAGINARY 18th CENTURY

Among the echoes of the French Revolution and the overthrow of the Ancien Régime, D. Maria I is the Mad Queen - a Queen in a cloistered world of dementia and evasion. Comic, tragic and poignant, this Queen "who has ceased to be Queen" was embodied in an unforgettable way by Fernanda Alves in D. Maria II National Theatre in 1987.
Miguel Rovisco’s play is based on historical data that contradicts two centuries of preconceived ideas of anti-monarchist historiography: D. Maria I was responsible for creating the Academy of Sciences and the National Library; she was the promoter of the first scientific expedition to the Amazon forest; she also had a role in the renewal of education and in the Navy. D. Maria I (1734-1816) was a cultured and sensitive person and a music and arts lover. There was only one slight detail: to reign was not her destiny.  Taken away definitely from her position in 1792, her madness had multiple origins: fanatic priests convinced her that her father was burning in Hell, by accusation of the Marquess of Pombal and the persecution of Jesuits; the loss of her husband and the death of her eldest son when she was 27 years old – he died of smallpox: the priests have forbidden her son to be inoculated with the vaccine that was being experienced at the time "because it was against the will of God."; the arrest of Marie Antoinette and the idea that France itself - considered the leader of the Old Continent - could decapitate its Queen was considered to be the final straw.
D. Maria wants to escape to a world “away from this misery”, a world of dreams and beauty symbolized by the Estrela Basilica, a symbol left by her – “a city which didn’t belong to her, full of dogs, criminals and garbage”. Next to her is the young Henriqueta, cold and sour chaperone, reflecting the dehumanizing reaction against society; the confrontation between these two women takes part of the first act ending with the Queen dancing the minuet "as before, with her beloved husband." Another presence is Rosa, a black servant whose historical model was a dwarf nurtured by the Queen -  representing the noble savage, the human being for whom the concept of sin does not exist; the fôfa-  "an obscene dance, far beyond her Africas"  will be her way of escape at the end of the opera. The second act fulfils the materialized hallucinations of D. Maria: on her birthday she is visited by three ladies who paint a hilarious and persistent portrait of the Portuguese historical reality intersected by memories and confidences of the Queen.
Harp, harpsichord and marimba symbolize D. Maria, Henriqueta and Rosa, respectively, in an orchestra that includes a wind quintet and a string quintet. Being the second part of a Madness trilogy started in 1994 with O Doido e a Morte - The Madman and Death, this opera explores the ghosts of the human mind with the sounds of an 18th imaginary.

Alexandre Delgado

ALEXANDRE DELGADO musical direction
JOAQUIM BENITE staging
JEAN-GUY LECAT sets
SÓNIA BENITE costumes

ANA ESTER NEVES D. Maria I
MÁRIA LUÍSA DE FREITAS D. Henriqueta and Dama Encarnada
ANA PAULA RUSSO Dama Verde
TERESA CARDOSO MENESES Dama Amarela
NILMA SANTOS Rosa

ORCHESTRUTOPICA