Project Description

Macabéa is an opera by Suzanne Farrin on a novel by Clarice Lispector for singers and Talea Ensemble that will be premiered in Portuguese in the 2025 season at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paulo. Development and the US premiere will be supported by the Consulate General of Brazil in New York. The commission is funded by a grant from the Siemens Foundation. Video documentation is sponsored by the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts as well as The Hunter College Foundation.

Synopsis

Macabéa is based on Clarice Lispector’s final work The Hour of the Star (1978). A Ukrainian-born Brazilian author, her work disrupts historical tropes regarding poverty by creating a character who is miserably poor yet strangely free. Young Macabea lives in Rio’s slums, barely existing, loving hot dogs, and spending time with her repulsive boyfriend. Macabea goes to see a fortune-teller. As she arrives another client is running out crying hysterically. The fortune-teller explains that the woman will soon be killed by a hit-and-run, but that Macabea will soon meet a rich, European boyfriend who will give her furs. But the seer’s signals were crossed: as Macabea steps onto the street a yellow Mercedes barrels down and strikes her. As she dies, the passersby do not see that her blood is a beautiful color red. In this operatic adaptation by novelist Sergio Chejfec, the narrator is a film director who, rather than observe Macabea’s death from a distance, builds a conspiracy to the climax of the fortune-teller’s misreading.