The Press about Maria de Buenos Aires

 Prepublicity

Orpheus Magazine, Ruud Buurman, July 01, 2026

No life without Tango

Maria de Buenos Aires is no ordinary opera. It is a surreal narrative about a woman who is seduced and destroyed by the tango, continues to wander the city as a ghost, and ultimately gives birth to herself anew. But Maria is more than a character. She is the tango. Her life reflects the history of the tango: originating in poor neighborhoods, connected to nightlife, died and reborn as an art form. 

Composer Astor Piazzolla and librettist Horace Ferrer wrote the piece out of frustration in the late 1960s. Passion had vanished from the tango. It had become a business model for the affluent bourgeoisie. Piazzolla breathed new life into it with longer compositions, different rhythms, and different instrumentation. His 'tango nuevo' made him world-famous, yet Maria de Buenos Aires received a lukewarm reception at its premiere in 1968. 

You can transfer the entire theme of this piece to the present day. For Maria de Buenos Aires poignantly depicts the divide between rich and poor. This divide is extreme in Argentina, but it is starting to become so here as well. This opera conveys the message that music can unite all layers of a population.