Amor Imposible

Through a subtle musical tapestry set in the 1930s with works by Gershwin, Prokofiev, and Revueltas, Alondra de la Parra, principal conductor and artistic director of the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, has crafted a tragic and amorous triptych for the concert that the Madrid orchestra is presenting at the Festival de Otoño.

The first part of the concert opens with Gershwin’s Catfish Row, the symphonic suite based on his opera Porgy and Bess, named after the street where the opera’s story unfolds. It centres on a love triangle in which a disabled man attempts to rescue a woman from a life of humiliation at the hands of another man.

This will be followed by a selection of seven ballet pieces from Romeo and Juliet, the love tragedy penned by William Shakespeare and translated into music by Russian composer Sergey Prokofiev, who completed the work around the same time Gershwin wrote Porgy and Bess. The ballet had its world premiere in Brno in 1938.

In the second part, the concert will close with La noche de los mayas, composed by Silvestre Revueltas, often described as “the eternal outsider” of Mexican music, a year after Prokofiev’s premiere, as the soundtrack for the film of the same name.

The film told the story of an impossible love between a Mayan woman and a white man, a tale that faded into obscurity, unlike Revueltas’ music. With its symphonic structure, melodies evoking traditional Mexican folklore, and the use of indigenous instruments, the work has retained a unique vitality that keeps it alive on stage.

Nobel laureate Octavio Paz praised Revueltas’ music for its “deep but also joyful concern for man, animal and things.” It is precisely this empathy with the world around him that makes Revueltas’ compositions “more significant than those of many of his contemporaries.”