The Music of Brazil

Camargo Guarnieri loved writing for the human voice, composing hundreds of vocal works over the course of his long and distinguished career. The works in this programme all use texts by Mário de Andrade – a hugely influential writer who was Guarnieri’s friend and long-term collaborator. The comic opera Pedro Malazarte is representative of an attractively unconventional and colourful Brazilian modernism that sets it apart from Romantic traditions. Alongside other powerful settings, A Serra do Rola-Moça is one of Guarnieri’s finest dramatic vocal works, narrating the tragic story of two young people who die on their wedding day as they and their horses plunge into a ravine.