Darwin en Patagonia
// opera
text: Diego Golombek
music: Mariano Agustín Fernández
It is an opera in 3 acts about Charles Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle, particularly with regard to his journey through Argentine Patagonia, where he made several findings that would be fundamental in the future theory of evolution. It is a work that is part of contemporary music, conceived as a vehicle to transmit historical and scientific aspects related to Darwin's life, but also as an approach to opera for different audiences.
Main characters:
Charles Darwin / tenor
Robert FitzRoy / baritone
Jemmy Button / countertenor (alt. alto)
Emma Wedgwood / mezzo
Juan Manuel de Rosas / bass
Narrator
Mixed choir (sailors, gauchos, porteños, yámanas)
Organic: Strings (vln 1 and 2, violas, cellos, double bass), flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, piano, percussion 1 and 2.
Duration 1h30' approx
Images taken from the partial premiere at Yale University in December 2024.
Plot
Imagine a young man of 23 years old who goes to discover the world... and rediscovers the world. A young man who is hired to verify in nature the absolute truths of the Bible and who, little by little, finds that the observations and conclusions he obtains are not going to make his employer very happy.
That young man is none other than Charles Darwin, a clergyman and insect lover who, from one day to the next, was involved in the greatest adventure he could have imagined: to sail around the world on the Beagle, under the command of the heroic Captain FitzRoy (a veteran with his 26 years of age and the sea wolf on his back), in charge of collecting and analyzing animals, plants, bones and any souvenir considered interesting. Five years of navigation (and of dry land, including gaucho rides and beach crossings) sowed at the same time the doubt about the immutability of species and the germ of the theory of evolution.
That Charles Darwin is our favorite scientist: the young boy who, at some point in the journey and the map, confronts himself, his beliefs and his ghosts, perhaps suspecting that, if he was right, everything (but everything) known was about to change. Then came the other Darwin, the old man with the long beard who was busy gathering data and meditating for many years until he dropped a bombshell called “The Origin of Species”. However, for all this to change, the voyage had to take place, touching exotic and unexplored coasts, including Montevideo, Buenos Aires and, particularly, Patagonia. There, Darwin became a naturalist, exhibiting his gifts as a geologist, paleontologist and lover of biodiversity, but why was the young Darwin aboard the Beagle? It was, in a way, a matter of class: Captain FitzRoy needed someone of his rank to dine and chat in his cabin. In those conversations there would be words from the Bible, unknown animals and fruits, languages to be discovered. Surely it was in our Patagonia when everything began to change for Darwin: religious explanations, biblical times, the immutability of the world ceased to make sense.