Barokopera Amsterdam

The Indian Queen, based on a play by John Dryden and Robert Howard, is one of Henry Purcell's most intriguing semi-operas. First performed as a spoken drama in 1664 – more than three decades before Purcell composed his music – the work has come down to us in fragmented form. Floating between theater and opera, speech and song, the structure of the work remains open and invites each generation to fill that space in their own way.  These civilizations could only come together in the seventeenth-century European imagination.  Over time, directors have struggled with how to bring this work to the stage. Artists such as Guy Cassiers and Peter Sellars have sought ways to bring this work into dialogue with the present, exposing the tension between baroque beauty and the depiction of colonial fantasies.  They include professional singers based in the Netherlands and members of Papaya Kuir, a lesbian-transfeminist collective founded by and for Latin American migrants and refugees. The dramaturgy takes migration and diversity as a starting point: people who migrate never travel alone;We contrast the emotions that Purcell's music evokes with the life experiences of the migrant artists on stage.  A troupe of Latin American migrant artists come together to prepare The Indian Queen;Here the main character, Purcell's Indian Queen dissolves into plurality and reclaims Indian Queens, Abya Yala, as the American continent is called by many indigenous peoples.   Music, theatre, sound and video come together in a staging that invites reflection on colonialism, identity and memory, while retaining the expressive theatricality of Baroque theatre. This project aims to present opera as a porous space open to inclusion, dialogue and intercultural learning;