As every year our magnificent Colón Theater will carry out an intense, varied and fascinating sum of activities. Although the movements within our first coliseum began last February with the show Thus, on February 18, the celebrations of the centenary of the stable bodies, one hundred years, nothing less, of history and excellence began.
The beginnings
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the City of Buenos Aires was considered the Paris of America, and was not alien to the most popular entertainment of the time: opera. You cannot avoid the fact that much of immigration arrived in the country came from Italy, so those who came to these prosperous lands brought their own cultural traditions. It was indispensable, then, to have a theater that was up to the great old world rooms and house these expressions with the most advanced technical and acoustic details of the moment. The construction of the Colón Theater is estimated to cost two million dollars of those times. And the process concluded with its inauguration on May 25, 1908, and the representation of the “Aída” opera, by Giuseppe Verdi.
In its origins, the Municipality, through an administrative commission in charge of the Mayor, ceded the concession to private entrepreneurs who were responsible for organizing the season and recruiting artists and companies, generally from Europe. The singers, musicians, dancers and technicians were hired from abroad and settled here for several months. With the passage of time the stable bodies were created, the scenical workshops (costumes, sculpture, scenery, hairdressing, shoe store, etc.) and the Buenos Aires coliseum thus acquired its own prestige, which placed it among the best lyrical theaters in the world.
New management
At the end of last year, there was a replacement of authorities and took over the reins of the Teatro Colón, the Uruguayan manager Gerardo Grieco. Preceded by its management at the head of the Sodre Auditorium, its mission at the Solís Theater and the creation of the Zitarrosa Room in Montevideo, is accompanied by the renowned dancer Julio Bocca, as director of the ballet, Chilean Andrés Rodríguez as opera director, and the former director of the CCK, Gustavo Mozzi, as music director. A body that has the mission, neither more nor less, to reposition the Columbus and resignify the dream of its founders.
“We seek to achieve a change of management model that generates an upgrade of the work culture of a 21st century lyrical theater. That is, return to the essence of the Colón Theater, which is a production, opera, ballet and concerts theater. We are fulfilling and celebrating the hundred years of the stable casts that were created by that generation of exceptional leaders of Argentina. Intellectuals and political who had the vision of making a strategic investment. First in this incredible building. Immediately later they realized that their contents matter, that it is a living theater. The brick, only, did not place Buenos Aires between the three or five major capitals of the world. That is why they gave continuity to an artistic production of absolute quality. That dream and that vision consolidated. They left here, Julio Bocca, Maximiliano Guerra, Paloma Herrera, Maríanela Núñez, musicians, singers, scene directors … ”, lists Grieco.
New dreams
“Today, after many geological layers, of many decades, the challenge is to resignify that same dream. The Columbus is the most recognized Buenos Aires brand. Maybe the most prestigious. And a little when the Minister of Culture (Gabriela Ricardes) and the Head of Government (Jorge Macri), of those first conversations, arises to generate a change of management model that resumes that dream and projects it towards the 21st century. That is the purpose with which we have been handling and implies some changes in the uses and customs. In what is done, what is not done and how it is done. I think that the programming we manage to propose for this 2025 is also an interpretation of what we want to do. Celebrate the hundred years of the casts, put them in value, put them back in the face of that constant search for artistic excellence and maximum splendor, ”adds the new Columbus director.
The programming of the opera season includes seven titles that began with “Aída” by Giuseppe Verdi; He will continue with “Il Tritic” by Giacomo Puccini, composed of the brief works “Il Tabarro, Suor Angélica and Gianni Schicchi”; The premiere in Argentina of “Billy Budd” by Benjamin Britten will follow; the new “Wether” production by Jules Massenet; the concert version of “I Puritani” by Vincenzo Bellini; the splendid “Salome” by Richard Strauss; And it will culminate with “La Traviata” by Giuseppe Verdi, one of the most required titles by the melómano public. The new Opera director, Andrés Rodríguez, declared: “I am infinitely honored to contribute as much as possible to this immense collective work that with justice is proud of Argentina. I will put all the experience collected throughout my 34 years of management at the Municipal Theater in Santiago at the service of Columbus ”.
Known titles
There will also be eighteen concerts of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, whose main director is the recognized Greek director Zoe Zeniodi. And among others, works by Shostakovich, Haydn, Bruckner, Elgar, Wagner, Mozart, Berio, Beethoven, Mahler, Ravel, Villa-Lobos, Strauss, Ginastera and Stravinsky.
As for the ballet, you can enjoy five titles: “Carmen” by Georges Bizet; a “mixed program” (“Paquita”, “For you I die” and “Chacona”); “Don Quijote” by Ludwing Minkus; “Onegin” by Piotr Illich Tchaikovsky; And for the end of the year it will be the turn of the traditional “The Nutcracker”, also from Tchaikovsky. “For me it was, it is and is going to be a challenge, I have a lot to return to the theater, and the theater has a lot to return to me. My idea is that the ballet travels through our country and the world, that it is one of the best companies, of the first ten worldwide, ”Julio Bocca said in this regard.
“When it called me it gave me a little vertigo. It is an imposing theater, full of wise people, who has a lot of knowhow. We are making a general diagnosis of the building, maintenance and some interventions that were poorly planned. 15 years ago, this theater had an intervention, a very important strategic investment, which returned beauty. He restored the room and heritage. You have to keep that in this field of unusual beauty. We are working hard on it, without wasteful, saving even in the sugar lump, but not sacrificing quality. You always have to be looking for excellence. While a little utopia is a bit, it is something that all the people involved are trying to do, to do our best to achieve it, ”says Grieco at the beginning of a cycle that celebrates a century of art.
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