Opera: Sueños robados

Aria: Sueños robados - sung in Spanish

  

 

Synopsis of the Imagined Opera

Sueños robados - (Stolen dreams)

Dionisio is traveling with his five year old son on La Bestia, the cargo train that many migrants board to travel, from the South to the North of Mexico to get to the border with the US.

He sings his son off to sleep in Maya, his mother tongue, but is disrupted by thieves boarding the train who steal his meagre belongings and clothes. He pleads for his life and that of his family.

He consoles his son by telling him about his dreams of a better life for them and the rest of his family back at home. He explains how he will be able to make enough money on the other side, (the US) for them to build a house with a bathroom and enough food so that none of them will starve. He consoles the little boy telling him he will see his mother on the other side and how happy she will be to see him. 

On arriving he explains he has to go alone to the immigration officers who will look after him. Dionisio runs away in fear of being deported.

Unaccompanied children are placed in detention centres on the US border where any relatives tracked down will eventually claim then.

Illegal adults who are caught are deported.

 

Performers

Luis Aguilar - Tenor

Born in Terreon, Mexican tenor Luis Aguilar holds a Masters in Musical Arts and a Masters of Music from Yale University, and a Bachelors in Music from The Hartt School. He is an alumnus of the Georg Solti Accademia.

Recent operatic performances include Lensky in a new production of Eugene Onegin directed by Paul Curran at the Shubert Theater in New Haven. He sang the role of Tamino at Yale’s Opera production of Die Zauberflöte in 2018; in 2016 he made his debut as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with Opera de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico.

In concert, Luis has sung the title role in Bernstein’s Candide with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, the tenor solo in Messiah with the Hartford Symphony and the Waterbury Symphony, as well as the solos in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Requiem.

Luis is a recipient of the Yale School of Music Alumni Association Prize for “students who have excelled in their respective fields and have made important contributions to the school of Music”. In 2018, at Les Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques Montreal, he received the Bourse Asiatique Prize. He was came in 4^th place and won the Jose Mojica prize in the Opera de San Miguel Competition 2018, and was a finalist in The Giulio Gari Foundation competition in 2017.

 

Alberto Rosado Carabias - Repetiteur

Alberto Rosado belongs to a generation of performers trained in a classical repertoire alongside being specially involved with contemporary music. His musical vocation is divided between performing and teaching, chamber and solo recitals, and between orchestra and electronics. He has worked with Boulez, Lachenmann, Halffter, De Pablo, Hosokawa and more than a hundred composers, who have enriched his vision of music and performance, such as the conductors Eötvös, Mälkki, Pons, Nott, Panisello, Encinar or Tamayo. Among his more than twenty edited recordings, the López López Piano Concerto with Kairos, Ligeti's Concerto with Neos and the complete piano works by Halffter and López López with Verso stand out. The most recent are e-piano_video&electronics, with IBS-Classical, Homage to Martha Graham by Humet with Neu and Fin du Temps, for IBS.

He teaches chamber music and contemporary piano as well teaching piano on the Master's degree programme at the Conservatorio Superior de Castilla y León, where he leads the Contemporary Music Workshop.

 

Creative Team

Hilda Paredes - Composer and Librettist

Firmly established as one of the leading Mexican composers of her generation she has been based in the UK for over 35 years.

While there is a testimony of constant collaboration with Mexican poets and artists in her works, she also draws inspiration from many different cultures from around the world. Her music has been acclaimed by the critics for the refinement of her craft, marked by the intensity of the relationship between time, dramatic force and poetic approach.

Her music has been recipient of important international awards, such as the PRS for Music Foundation, The Gwärtler Stiftung in Switzerland, the Fellowship from Sistema Nacional de Creadores, in Mexico, the J.S. Guggenheim fellowship for the creation of her opera El Palacio Imaginado, commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte, English National Opera and the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven. Most recently her opera Harriet, Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman, won the Ivors British Composers award. 

After studying composition at the Conservatoire in Mexico City with Mario Lavista, she studied at Dartington Summer School, with Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. She was also a student at Franco Donatoni’s Masterclasses at the Academia Chighiana. Graduated from the Guildhall School of Music, obtained her Master of Arts at City University in London and completed her PhD at Manchester University.

Paredes’ music has been commissioned and performed by many prestigious ensembles, orchestras and soloists and has been widely performed at important international festivals, around the world.