Upcoming Events | Tourism Winnipeg

7:30pm

Maria Brea is one of Venezuela’s most acclaimed opera singers

As a youngster,  Maria Brea  learned folk music from her Cuatro-playing father. Today, the soprano is fast making a name for herself across North America. Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Opera, Palais Garnier are just some of the prestigious stages the Juilliard grad has already graced, where she has stunned audiences with her dazzling range and intoxicatingly lush tones.  Maria makes her Winnipeg debut under the baton of  Anne Manson,  singing vocal works by Alexandre Regnault and Odaline de la Martinez’s Four AfroCuban Poems. Martinez’s infectious work has its origins in conversations between friends Nicolas Guillen and Langston Hughes. How we would like to have been a fly on the wall for those talks. Guillen is considered Cuba’s national poet, and Hughes one of the Harlem Renaissance’s — and America’s — greatest poets. While visiting Guillen in Cuba, Hughes remarked on the similarities between Cuban ‘son’ music and American ‘blues’ music. This inspired Guillen’s Motivos de son, which draws on Afro-Cubans’ everyday speech, living conditions, and folk music. It’s almost surprising that someone hasn’t already set this masterpiece of poetry to music, as Martinez does in her irresistible Four AfroCuban Poems