There is no force on Earth as powerful as desire.

 I want to be a flood of water that carries away the stones.

— García Lorca

Although Federico García Lorca is well known for his vivid imagination, it is hard to believe that the Granada-born poet could have imagined the calamitous state into which our planet has fallen less than a century after his unjust death. In Yerma, Lorca speaks to us of the fertile and the barren, of desire turned to obsession, of the Earth and the body as symbolic spaces of life or emptiness. The name of its protagonist is no coincidence: Yerma (Barren) is more than a character. She represents a condition and a warning, a metaphor for the consequences of physical, spiritual or ecological fertility running its course.

Of the poet’s three rural tragedies, Yerma is particularly caustic, as the title character is doomed by forces beyond her grasp: duty, loveless marriage, the prying eyes of villagers and, in particular, the fear of gossip that crushes a woman’s resolve like the heaviest of stones. Yerma not only desperately wants to have a child, but she also longs for a fullness of life that the patriarchal society will not allow her. Her wishes are repressed and deformed by social mores, and she is driven to madness in a tragic and liberating final act. Similarly, our planet cries out for offspring and regeneration, but our ambition blinds us, and we leave her barren.

With this production, we wish to pay tribute to our Earth, to the Blue Planet and its environmental diversity and wealth, so that we humans may remain fertile. The figure of Yerma embodies desperation that is born of abandonment, silence and isolation and comes to symbolise a planet that voicelessly cries out for its right to life.

We propose for you a journey in which electrifying images abound: images that need not words but silence; images that strike your retina and reveal that the Earth’s drifting course is no accident but the result of unbridled capitalism that rots, depletes and devours all that it touches. Just as Yerma lives her life under the asphyxiating pressure of duty, our civilisation remains the prey of a predatory model that will not allow natural balance.

We invite you to take part in this lyrical-sensorial experience that obliges us to contemplate our human and planetary behaviour. As Lorca showed us, water is a symbol of life. We must not allow life to wither, desire to shrivel or our Earth (like Yerma) to run dry. It’s not too late.

Paco Azorín

For subscription opera performances, free round-trip transport is provided by two TITSA buses departing from the south and north of he island. For more information, routes and tickets, click here.

Tickets for the performance on Tuesday the 14th

Tickets for the performance on Thursday 16th

Tickets for the performance on Friday the 17th

Tickets for the performance on Saturday 18th

Born in Rio de Janeiro on March 5, 1887, the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos passed away in the same city on November 17, 1959. He was the son of Raúl, a librarian and amateur musician, and Noêmia, a housewife of indigenous heritage. His father provided his initial musical training. Throughout his childhood, Villa-Lobos’ home was open to many musicians, with his family gaining recognition for their musical evenings. By the time his father died when he was 12, Villa-Lobos had already embarked on a professional music career, despite family hopes that he would study medicine. He acted as a café musician on the cello, the instrument his father played, and also occasionally performed on guitar, clarinet, and piano.

At the age of 18, in 1905, he undertook his first trip—an intensive exploration of Brazil’s north-eastern states—which enabled him to collect valuable information about the folk music of those areas. His stories about this expedition endowed it with an air of mystery and fantasy, highlighting its importance as a highly productive and formative musical experience. Following this voyage, he registered at the National Institute of Music in his hometown, but never fully embraced formal academic traditions. His interest in ethnomusicology led him to continue travelling, including a trek through the Amazon basin. He returned to Rio in 1912, and three years later presented a concert featuring his own compositions—new music that already displayed the hallmarks of his style, impossible to categorise, free from the conventions of academic nationalism, with a signature he described as ‘natural music’, inspired by indigenous, African, and Portuguese cultures. Reception of his music in Brazil was mixed: while the more conservative audience did not understand his approach, others were enthusiastic.

In 1923, he secured a government grant to study in Paris. A decade prior, he had married pianist and composer Lucília Guimarães. Paris, the cultural hub of Europe at the time, warmly received his music. The colourful nature of his compositions, unlike anything known in Europe, was much admired. While there, he encountered notable musicians such as Stravinsky, Ravel, and Varèse, whose works left a lasting impact on his music.

Returning from Paris in 1930, he was appointed Director of Music Education in his hometown. This position enabled him to embark on a distinct path in his career, that of a pedagogue. Together with Lucília Guimarães, who remained his wife until 1936, he created and launched a comprehensive system of music instruction for public schools throughout Brazil, one deeply grounded in popular culture and steeped in clear and heartfelt patriotism.

Starting to compose at 14, Villa-Lobos created almost two thousand works, including many reworkings of originals. His best-known pieces were composed between 1932 and 1938, especially the six Bachianas brasileiras, which aimed to blend Bach’s contrapuntal style with Brazilian folk melodies. These include works for eight cellos (1932), chamber orchestra (1933), piano and orchestra (1934), solo piano (1930–1940; orchestration completed in 1942), voice and eight cellos (1938), and flute and bassoon (1938). His guitar repertoire features Preludes, Studies, and various Chôros—fifteen pieces composed from 1920 to 1928 for different instrumental settings—that exemplify the fusion of popular and classical traditions.

Among his dramatic works, his four operas stand out: Izaht (1914), Magdalena (1948), Yerma (1955), and The Cloud Maiden (1957), alongside central themes for the films Descobrimento do Brasil (1938) and Green Mansions (1959). His extensive output also includes the symphonic poem “Amazonas” (1917), the ballet-poem “Uirapuru” (1917), “Rudepoema” for piano (1926), “Emperador Jones” (1955), and Symphony No. 12 (1958). He wrote his first five symphonies between 1916 and 1920; he returned to this form in 1944 and composed until his last symphony in 1958.

His most inspiring and productive partnerships with other musicians include his friendship and collaboration with Uruguayan guitarist Abel Carlevaro, whom he met in 1940 in Montevideo, and Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão, with whom he formed an artistic relationship that lasted 38 years. Villa-Lobos brought Carlevaro to Rio to show him his guitar scores, teach him to perform them, and gifted him manuscripts of some of his compositions. He shared his compositional philosophy and explored Brazil’s profound musical traditions with him. The young guitarist went on to premiere some of Villa-Lobos’s pieces.

The 1940s marked his rise to international fame, with numerous commissions coming from the US, some of which were connected to Hollywood. His music was also enthusiastically embraced in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is recognised as one of Latin America’s foremost composers and a pivotal figure in Brazilian music during the 20^th century. His work has left an enduring mark on Latin American music, performed by orchestras worldwide and continues to be studied and appreciated today for its artistic value and its contribution to the construction of Brazilian cultural identity.