As part of the Ópera en minúscula’ (Small-format Opera) concerts, Tristana by Miguel Huertas-Camacho has been scheduled for performance at the Teatro Leal in a co-production of Auditorio de Tenerife and the Autonomous Community of Madrid. This contemporary chamber opera is based on the novel by Benito Pérez Galdós and the screenplay by Luis Buñuel and Julio Alejandro.

It is a contemporary opera that explores freedom and desire and makes metaphorical use of the body as a battlefield. This version of Tristana offers a radically updated interpretation of the novel of Benito Pérez Galdós and explores the symbolic power of the female body and the right to emancipation. Based on the screenplay of Luis Buñuel and Julio Alejandro and with a libretto written by Jorge Volpi, this adaptation is set in the Chamberí neighbourhood of 21st-century Madrid, where the echoes of a patriarchal and bourgeois Spain are still heard in modern corridors, cell phones and moments of silence in which violence hangs in the air.

The original score, composed by Miguel Huertas, is interpreted on piano, cello and percussion, with vocals provided by a soprano, a tenor, a baritone and an actress. Onstage, the characters —Juan López Garrido, Tristana, Horacio and Saturna— make their way through an intimate, political and emotional landscape that brings together love, power, dependence and the need to break away from everything.

The work is staged around a large LED display and live video through which gestures are amplified, intimacy is decomposed and essential, and symbolic details are revealed: controlling hands, a shifting gaze, and a broken voice. Rather than serving as mere decoration, these resources are an essential part of the work’s language and provide spectators with cinematically and emotionally crucial moments.

However, the real rupture occurs at the end of the story. Whereas the novel ends with Tristana’s mutilation, in this version, she is the one who decides to leave. Rather than a leg being amputated, a voice is heard insistently, although it is a wounded voice. Rather than submission and defeat, this version’s contemporary, lucid and contradictory Tristana chooses a path that may lead to freedom. However, it may entail pain and may require singing with a different voice.