Thomas Tatzl to star in new opera based on Lorca play

Thomas Tatzl

Austrian barihunk Thomas Tatzl will star in composer Mauricio Sotelo's new opera El Público, commissioned  by the last Gerard Mortier for the Teatro Real in Madrid. The work was adapted by Andrés Ibáñez from a 1930 piece by Federico García Lorca, which he wrote in Cuba after the transcendent trip he made to New York, in the midst of a profound emotional crisis and creative spirit.

The play, which Lorca gave to his friend Martínez Nadal on the condition that he destroy it upon his death, was premiered in Milan in 1968. Librettist Andrés Ibáñez wrote this about keeping the two essential themes of the work:

“...homosexuality and contemporary theatre. They both come united in a central theme that relates to the appearance or the mask. A mask of “love that cannot be named”, and in the end a mask that reveals itself as the essence of the human being. (...) Obscenity, cruelty, and irreverence are basic elements of Lorca’s poetic language. They have not been emphasised nor avoided. The text explores sexual desire with an honesty and complexity that defies the more or less moralist well-meaning simplifications.”

Thomas Tatzl, who we briefly featured back in 2012, studied voice at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He was a member of the ensemble at the Zurich Opera House, and has also performed at the Salzburger Festspiele, Maggio Musicale Firenze, Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, the Menuhin Festival in Gstaat, the Music Society Steiermark and the “Amici della Musica” in Padua.

The opera runs from February 24-March 13 and it will be recorded on DVD with international distribution, as well as broadcast on television and on the web.