Translating the power, strength and impetus conveyed by the work Carmina Burana, especially the fragment O Fortuna –the one that everyone knows– to a set design, is a challenge in itself. La Fura del Baus did it 10 years ago and is still touring with this show that comes back to Madrid, at the Teatro Calderón, after touring three continents and being seen by more than 250,000 spectators. A success that Carlus Padrissa, stage director of the play, attributes to chance, the same as Carl Orff had when he composed this highly recognizable piece of music.
The original Carmina Burana is a collection of 300 poems, from the 12th and 13th centuries, that extol the pleasure of living and interest in earthly pleasures, carnal love and enjoyment of nature, always with a critical and satirical towards the social and ecclesiastical classes of the time. The collection of poems is preserved in a single codex found in 1803 by JohannChristoph von Aretin, in the Benediktbeuern abbey, in Bavaria. And it is kept in the Munich State Library.
The musical creation that Carl Orff made, between 1935 and 1936, was based on 24 poems from that manuscript. Work from which the show of La Fura dels Baus starts. “We have created a show with strong scenic images, with the intention of illustrating and illuminating all the power and poetry of some texts that, despite being over 800 years old, speak of desires that unite us again with the most ancestral of our species,” explains the theater company.
Carlus Padrissa says that this work arrives in Madrid at the best moment because it is a kind of celebration of spring, of the summer solstice. “It is a ritual in which the monks laugh at nature. They are contained, frozen, all winter and then they have the carnival in a sense of internal orgasm, of giving themselves to someone.” A euphoria that the public will be able to feel in their own flesh, since La Fura dels Baus seeks direct contact with the public. The choir and dancers go through the stalls or the baritone sings in the middle of the spectators. “There is touch, smell, sight, hearing… only the taste is missing,” says Padrissa. Also, the singers jump into a tank of water, wetting the audience in the front rows and being transported by a crane.
The woman
The stage director explains that the protagonist of this play is a woman who is making the leap into adulthood. A story that Padrissa defines as feminist because the protagonist surrenders, breaks the chains of her fear of what could happen. And she does it because she wants to and then reaches sexual maturity without fear and by her own decision. “The aria In Trutina – she insists – is an orgasm, there is no music that better represents orgasm than that, than Carmina Burana”.
The version
Despite the fact that the play is 10 years old, its scenery has garnered controversy for being too avant-garde. “The more traditional public always complains about the adaptations of the classics,” says the director. However, he has pointed out that this version of Carmina Burana is an opera designed so that any spectator “makes his imagination fly.” “Art must be in constant effervescence because if it doesn’t die”, Carlus Padrissa stressed.
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