The composer, the soprano and the mystery of time

In this world set up for frivolity, taking a moment to write a letter, in your own handwriting, seems eccentric. Even more so if it involves sharing with a friend a reflection on silence, that stranger that visits us fleetingly but goes unnoticed.

“It is not consolation, silence, it is not oblivion /

what I look for in your hands like feathers; /

What I want from you is not the mists, /

but the certainties: the lost.”

This is how it begins to silencea poem that Victoria de los Ángeles carried with her, as part of her repertoire in Rome, one day in 1959. It was written by Ramón Gaya and set to music by the composer Salvador Moreno, who met Gaya during his exile in Mexico.

That day, Moreno took the opportunity to introduce him to the Catalan soprano. The meeting sealed the friendship of the three for posterity, because if something characterized them it was their deep sensitivity and their “great spirit”, words with which Ramón described Victoria and that also resonate when seeing the portrait he painted of Salvador in 1943. .

⁄ Victoria solemnly sang Salvador’s songs. “Victoria stops time,” he said.

Of parents from Cádiz, Salvador Moreno Manzano was born in the Veracruz city of Orizaba, although he would soon leave his homeland, never to return until the end of his life. A misunderstood genius, too sophisticated to withstand the macho pretensions of the same Mexican nationalism that elevated the discourse of the muralists, he was harassed for his homosexuality in the high intellectual spheres, although not necessarily tolerant.

Ironically, he found his place in the Spain of the dictatorship and, love, in Barcelona. He made Barcelona his home with his partner, Juan Alberca, and dedicated himself to painting, as evidenced by his work, preserved in the Mercedes Beaskoa Gallery. He rescued from memory the Catalan artists who left their mark in Mexico, such as Santjoaní, Jaume Nunó, author of the music of the Mexican national anthem; he wrote orchestrations for the Liceu and even an opera, which would premiere there, Severino. Moreno became a true Barcelonan who enjoyed the company of Gil de Biedma, Carlos Barral, Xavier Montsalvatge, Cristòfor Taltabull and, of course, Victoria de los Ángeles, his muse. For him, Barcelona was more than a city; It was a whole continent, as he confessed to Josep Maria Montaner: “(…) I sensed that it was different, that it was not Spain, that it was another Europe.”

Victoria and Salvador built their friendship through mutual admiration, a close relationship of complicity and a deep affection that was immortalized in their letters, in the tributes that the antidiva dedicated to him in the monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, in the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council and in the emotion with which he sang the poems set to music by the composer. Victoria solemnly sang those songs written in Nahuatl, respecting the silence between each word, as if she were offering her voice to those pagan gods with impossible names.

“Victoria stops time,” Salvador said. In his book, The feeling of music (1986), he reflects on the mysticism of silence in Saint John of the Cross, an idea that he had outlined in a letter sent to his muse and friend, three years earlier. She, for her part, was very eloquent in the interview she gave in Mexico on May 27, 1988: “I have known Salvador for 36 years, I admire him, I love him very much because both in his writings, in his painting, and in “His music reflects a very simple, very poetic sensibility.”

⁄ They were united by the sinuous path of their lives, an intrinsic melancholy and the contemplative nature

Victoria and Salvador were united by the sinuous path of their lives and an intrinsic melancholy that manifested itself in their contemplative character. On the 20th anniversary of the death of Victoria de los Ángeles, I would like to think that the anecdote that Antoni Ros Marbà tells has its origin in the conviction they shared about the importance of silence: during a rehearsal, the soprano suggested another tempo to Herbert von Karajan, but was ignored by the Austrian director. Then, “she was silent, she did not sing a note.” And only the great spirits know the mystery of stopping time.