Opera in 2 acts.

4 episodes in 2 acts.

S 3Mz 2T 2Bar B *2*222-4230-tmp+3-arp-cu

30-07-1994 Chamber orchestra version (orchestration by Albert Guinovart): Josep Ruiz, Francisco Vas, Rosa Mateu, Josep Ferer, Mercè Obiol, Núria Canals, Cori Casanova, Xavier Comorera, Xavier Mendoza, Cecília Gasull, Ignasi Tarruella, soloists. Orquestra de Cadaqués, Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, conductor. Inauguration of the XXIII Cadaqués Music Festival.

14-08-1994 Original symphonic version: Orquestra de Cadaqués. Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, conductor. Festival Castell de Peralada.

Book by Xavier Montsalvatge.

The singers sing in Italian, Spanish, French, English, Hebrew and Portuguese.

A girl plays a mute character.

There is also a version for chamber ensemble arranged by Albert Guinovart.

Presented at the 1st Opera Competition convened by the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 1967. The award was declared void.

Babel 46 is the third opera by Xavier Montsalvatge, which narrates the relationships established within a group of refugees of various nationalities - and which are expressed in different languages - while they await their repatriation after the Second World War.

Comments

"When composing Babel 46, at the same time that I did not think of departing too much from operatic conventionalisms, I wanted to avoid the influence that could derive from my preferences for the four great nationalist schools of opera: the Russian, so important ; the German one, full of philosophical speculations that I would not know how to assume; the French, less transendental, although of true projection, and the most emblematic one, the Italian. Fatally, however, the latter, for which I do not hide a special predilection, may have infiltrated more than one page of the score, making me run the risk that someone may consider it close to a deliberate "neo-verism". The important point, however, is that in one or another way, the dramatic knot of the libretto is reflected with a certain realism, which highlights the contrast between a solidarity feigned by the characters during their forced internment which, at the time of freedom, turns out to be a pure lie, a fiction promoted by the singularity of the circumstances."

Xavier Montsalvatge, 1996.