Five centuries after the birth of Luís Vaz de Camões, a Brazilian composer decided to bring the Portuguese poet back to the stage, not as a historical monument, but as a living presence, traversed by doubts, human conflicts, and contemporary issues. Jônatas Manzolli, a senior professor at Unicamp and affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Center for Sound Communication (NICS), will premiere the opera this Thursday, May 21st, in Coimbra, Portugal. Camões and Cassandra: songs of the human condition.
The work brings together music, theater, poetry, video, soundscapes, and technology in a scenic experience constructed as a passage between past and present. “The idea wasn’t to create a static tribute,” says Manzolli. “I wanted to bring Camões to the university and to the present day, to make him engage in dialogue with contemporary issues.”
Presented at the Gil Vicente Theatre, the one hour and 45 minute performance is directed by Artur Pinho Maria. The opera concludes the seventh edition of the University of Coimbra's Theatre and Performing Arts Cycle and involves more than one hundred participants, including choir, orchestra, cast and technical team. On stage will be four soloists, the Inês de Castro Symphonic Choir, the Inês de Castro Orchestra and the Bonifrates Cooperative, with the virtual presence of its actors.
The seed for the project sprouted after previous work done by Manzolli in Coimbra, which involved poetry and soundscapes. After the presentation, researchers connected to the Camões Studies Center commented that the celebrations of the poet's 500th anniversary would begin without anyone having created an opera dedicated to him. "That stuck in my head," he recalls. "I had already written operas before, one for the 50th anniversary of Unicamp and another based on..." Macunaima"I've always found opera to be a very powerful language," she says.
“In Coimbra, there is a whole tradition surrounding Camões. The Camões Studies Center even holds one of the first copies of Os Lusiadas (1572). When I went to Lisbon, I passed by the Jerónimos Monastery and the idea came to me: 'What if Camões' mortal remains aren't really here?'. This question, which spans centuries, was the dramatic starting point.”
Words and music
The protagonist of the show is Cassandra Tágides, played by soprano Ana Freitas, a university researcher who decides to investigate new clues about the whereabouts of the poet's remains. As she persists with her hypothesis, she faces academic resistance and isolation. "It doesn't mean she's right or wrong, she wants answers. Today there is a lot of pressure against the scientific method, and I wanted to bring this issue into the work," says the composer.
On the opposite side is the character António Atento, played by tenor Pedro Rodrigues, a Camões expert, who questions her: why meddle in this now? What's the point of investigating?
Inspired by the structure of Baroque opera and Greek drama, the work incorporates an academic chorus of 12 singers who comment on events, satirize conflicts, and accompany the protagonist's journey. "The chorus is sometimes ironic, sometimes it functions as a narrator. At certain moments it asks: why is she alone? What is she looking for? At others, it debates who is right," Manzolli points out.
At the beginning of each of the four acts, Cassandra begins to receive imaginary letters sent by characters from Camões' universe. The chorus even questions the researcher for "consulting the dead," reinforcing the interplay between imagination, historical research, and fabulation present throughout the work.
The first letter comes from Calliope, muse of philosophy and artistic inspiration. Then come Leonor, a character from Camões' lyric poetry, and Dinamene, a love figure associated with a young Chinese or Macanese woman with whom the poet is said to have fallen in love in the 16th century. According to tradition, she died in a shipwreck while Camões was saving the manuscript. Os Lusiadas.
Also present are Vasco da Gama, immortalized in Os Lusiadas, a work that celebrates the expedition of the captain who discovered the route to India, and Inês de Castro, a historical figure, interpreted by mezzo-soprano Gisela Sachse, who plays an important role in the narrative and has a solo called The song of my solitude, creating a parallel between characters separated by centuries, but marked by shared anxieties.
Camões only appears at the end, but during the performance, his poems, interpreted by actors, are brought to life in soundscapes. In the finale, the poet enters the stage, portrayed by baritone Rui Silva.
Legacy
Throughout the narrative, the initial obsession with the mortal remains loses strength in the face of Camões' symbolic dimension. One of the decisive moments occurs when Vasco da Gama suggests to the protagonist that perhaps what is most important is not the materiality of the bones, but the human and cultural permanence of the poet. “The opera begins with the question of the mortal remains, but tries to move towards what really matters,” summarizes Manzolli. “Camões is not in the bones. He is in his work, in his legacy, in what he represents for all of us.”
According to the composer, the interpretation proposed by the staging seeks to move away from the monumental image frequently associated with the author of Os LusiadasInstead of epic grandeur, the work emphasizes the lyrical and existential dimension of Camões' poetry. "Camões wrote about the disarray of the world, about power, suffering, transformation. This remains extremely relevant today," he states.
Manzolli chose not to directly set Camões' poems to music. The texts are recited and accompanied by electroacoustic soundscapes, videos, and visual projections developed in partnership with Amílcar Cardoso, from the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Coimbra. "I wanted to preserve the power of the word."
In the soundtrack, the composer sought dialogues between tradition and contemporaneity. The instrumentation combines Portuguese guitar and harp, baroque harpsichord and vibraphone, in addition to incorporating typical instruments and a string orchestra. "The idea was to bring the past to converse with the present," he emphasizes. "For the percussion, I researched the 'tunas' in Coimbra, groups of students who play and dance in the streets. I went to them, saw what instruments they used, and incorporated those sounds."
The work was created from an original libretto in collaboration with Paula Santos, from the Bonifrates Cooperative. Manzolli says he wrote the text and music simultaneously. “It became very tightly woven, almost like a tapestry. I spent about a year and a half on this process. By the end of last year, the opera was already finished, and then we started working more on the financing and production aspects,” he adds.
After its premiere in Coimbra, the composer would like to stage the show at Unicamp, further bridging the gap between Brazil, Portugal, and the tradition of the Portuguese language. "Camões belongs to the entire Lusophone world," he states. "He is universal."
Camões' bones: a historical mystery
The uncertainty surrounding the remains of Luís de Camões (1524–1580) spans centuries and helps fuel the plot of the opera created by Jônatas Manzolli. Officially, the author of Os Lusiadas He is buried in the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon, where a monumental tomb has honored the poet since the 19th century. However, historians and researchers question whether the bones deposited there truly belong to Camões.
According to historical records, the poet was initially buried in the Church of Sant'Ana in Lisbon, in a simple grave. The site was destroyed during the 1755 earthquake that devastated the Portuguese capital. The transfer of the supposed remains to the Jerónimos Monastery only occurred in 1880, during the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the writer's death. At the time, the commission responsible for the transfer itself admitted uncertainties about the authenticity of the remains found.
Despite the doubts, researchers emphasize that the symbolic value of the tomb remains intact. More than the mortal remains, scholars of Camões' work affirm that Camões' legacy lies in the permanence of his poetry and the influence he exerted on the Portuguese language.
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