I’m three opera singers who are also companions at the Teatro Colón. “After the operas, people would always approach us to ask us if we couldn’t sing in private gatherings and it felt good to take the operas out of the Colón Theater and take them to other areas. Thus it was born the windBaritone Esteban Hildebrand told Clarín.
The trio will perform, completed by the tenors Diego Bento and Nazareth Aufe this Friday, at 9pm, at the Globe Theater with a show in which they combine “emotion with a smile”, according to the definition of Aufe.
The first steps
“We started making fragments of works and added more popular music to them. We enjoyed acting in those familiar spaces but one day we decided to take this project to the theater. We realized it could work in that format, which is different from working in events where you are among the people and there is another chemistry, ”Hildebrand added.
And he added: “We started in the small underground theaters and after the pandemic we decided to go a step further and we went to a bigger room, El Vitral and people were left out; we repeated and the same thing. So we have started looking for a bigger room and we found the Teatro del Globo, which has very good acoustics “
-How did you develop the repertoire from opera to popular?
N / A: -We started with the most common work, such as La Donna e Mobile, Nessun Dorma, La Traviata and others, fragments of works that are in people’s ears and later we included popular themes like ‘O sole mio, Granada, Cielito Carino . Everyone liked this repertoire, but not everyone, so we added songs that generated audience participation and it became a more fun show. What we wanted to break was that very serious spirit of opera singing and we also started adding lines.
DB: -Later we wanted to do it another way and we hired a librettist who developed a script in the style of Les Luthiers and that experience turned out to be very good. It worked, but the people following us ended up learning about that routine and we changed it. We turned a little towards more popular themes, with a repertoire with compositions by Frank Sinatra such as New York, New York; or songs from Il Divo and Il Volo.
popular opera song
Aufe was born from the participation in Paraguay in a show with Plácido Domingo and saves the attitude of the tenor who opened his repertoire in search of a new audience. “Since the repertoires of Los Tres Tenores (Luciano Pavarotti-Placido Domingo- José Carreras) have expanded in the search to bring opera singing to a more popular field,” commented the tenor.
– Faced with this broad treatment of the work, do you see them as heretics at the Colón?
EB: -They see it well because it is a question of bringing the work into less formal spaces and therefore generating the possibility of a new approaching public. Currently, the Colón is experiencing a decline in the audience. When we finish our show, people come to us and say, “Now I have to go to the Colon”. That is to say, there is an audience that is interested in the work. But it is also true that there are works that last three hours, some are worth it but others are not.
N / A: -The theater realizes that it is necessary to expand the audience. It works, for example, actively with children and schools to bring new audiences closer to the opera.
EB: -There is no longer that school where the grandfather made his son listen to the work and passed it on to his grandson.
Adapting for a new audience
For both Hildenbrand and Aufe, the Colón is still opening up to new shows. “Famous artists like Valeria Lynch sing or perform a show around the compositions of Cacho Castaña; Star Wars was made with a screen, ”says Aufe.
For Hildenbrand, the works now have to adapt to a new audience. “It can’t last pearl divers three hours when the same work could be done in one hour; that is, all its musical richness could be summed up in an hour. I’m not aware they’re thinking of something like that, but the time may come, “she said.
How will the presentation at the El Globo Theater be?
HEY: – Let’s start with Great love, I’ll fly; some songs from Il Divo, such as Hallelujah, Until my end; something by Frank Sinatra, pieces by Andrea Bocelli such as, for example, I live for herthat we will sing it with the soprano Laura Polverini as a guest.
N / A: -While we develop the show we make jokes, we don’t tell jokes, but we talk among ourselves and with the audience of opera singers, which is the most important and what we get are smiles and an atmosphere of entertainment which is the ultimate purpose of the show “said Aufe .
The beginnings
Hildenbrand met Columbus at the hands of her aunt at the age of four. At the age of six he was already singing opera arias in his own way. His vocation caused him family problems, although he did not give up and began studying with Nilda Offman, then he had Dante Lanutti who made him enter Juventus Lyrica, and finally studied with the baritone Ricardo Yost, who prepared him to enter the Alta Colón Theater Institute of Art. He has joined the choir and is part of the permanent cast of the Teatro Colón.
Aufe is from Montevideo. The closeness to his music began by singing the tango at the request of his father, with whom he practiced. “They went well for me and I even sang almost professionally,” he commented. At the age of 12 he was about to participate in the legendary Silvio Soldán program, Great values of tangobut in the end he did not travel.
Then he contacts Virgilio Luongo, with whom he takes technique lessons and prepares him to enter the Sodre children’s choir where he begins his approach to classical music. Then it is the director of the choir and orchestra Antonio Russo who suggests that he go to Buenos Aires and go to this city weekly to take lessons with Eduardo Cogorno who prepares him to enter the Higher Art Institute of the Colón Theater. He is currently a member of the Colón stable choir.
Bento began studying classical piano at the López Buchardo Conservatory at the age of 11, but ended up leaning towards singing. His father, an opera singer from the Colón, had an important influence. Together with his mother, he attends opera evenings at the Colón to listen to his father, with whom he begins to study singing. Shortly thereafter he auditioned and entered the Teatro Argentino de La Plata and then the Colón, and since 2005 he has been a member of the theater team.
Information: Il Vento will be presented on Friday 11 November, at 9:00 pm, at the Teatro del Globo, Marcelo T. de Alvear 1155. Tickets from $ 1800 via Ticketek.com.ar
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Source: Clarin
