Operafest Lisboa 2022

O Homem dos Sonhos (The Man of Dreams)

António Chagas Rosa

Inedited

10 SEP | 21h00

Garden of Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga

Opera in 7 Scenes

Sung in Portuguese

Subtitled in English

Length: 1h30

"I’ve mastered dreams. I dream what I want. I live what I want."

Dedicated to Destiny in vertigo, Operafest 2022 closes big with this long dreamt project inspired by the dramatic and visionary novel of the same name from Mário De Sá Carneiro, commissioned by Opera do Castelo (2022, Teatro São Luiz). Acclaimed by critics and audience with the brilliant staging of Miguel Loureiro, can now be experienced in open air, in the "dream" garden of MNAA… right after, enjoy the operatic rave "Masked ball to defy destiny", a dancing operatic party with multiple surprises!

This opera throughout its 7 scenes reflects on the human condition, on the thin line between madness and sanity, dream and reality, assuming humanity’s eternal in-satisfaction and its continuous obsession with transcending the limits of time, space and gender. It’s also about the premonitory and structuring fascination of the dream itself, given that it’s the dream that models and guides humanity in its existential path, both as a global society and as individuals. All that we are has perchance been dreamt and transformed into visible matter.

A mysterious and elegant man (embodied by the soprano Catarina Molder, the poet’s alter-ego) has managed to reach supreme happiness, by transcending the border of dreams, overcoming the fastidious life’s routine, and living all which was dreamt: travelling in dreams to countries of new and indescribable colours, to cities where the gas they breathed was made of music, to countries with more than two genders, where the soul was visible and the body, fairly, was not…

Musical direction: Jan Wierzba

Stage direction: Miguel Loureiro

Set Design: André Guedes

Props: João Telmo

Light Design: Daniel Worm

Light Design adaptation: Ricardo Campos

Catarina Molder (soprano), man of dreams

Christian Luján (baritone), poet

Vasco Santos and Pedro Santos, actors

Ensemble MPMP

Production: Ópera do Castelo

Co-production: Teatro São Luiz, Teatro Viriato