Maria de Buenos Aires by Piazzolla, Dg. 12 Març 2023, De (2023/2023), Dirigit per Sommer Ulrickson,, Director musical Andreas Kowalewitz, Theater am Bismarckplatz, Regensburg, Germany

WITH MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES , Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) composed a declaration of love to the tango and to his hometown Buenos Aires, which takes human form in the title character María, the originally eponymous city saint, as the “daughter of the suburbs”. María is at the same time saint and sinner, desired and abandoned, a lover and a sufferer who, in the course of the tango opera, encounters thieves, whores and other marginalized people. They are all caught in a web of violence, sexuality, longing and fantasies. Their feelings are just as diverse as the history of this city and its inhabitants - a story of the eternal cycle of becoming and passing away again. With MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES , however, Piazzolla did not create a conventional opera, but ingeniously intertwined acting, song and dance with the various styles of Tango Nuevo. The basis for the revue, which premiered in 1968, are the texts by the poet Horacio Ferrer. Sommer Ulrickson sees Piazzolla 'S MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES as a projection surface for desires and hopes. In her staging, she takes up the various levels of the metaphorical imagery and reveals the hidden layers of the work.