Frédéric Chopin and George Sand met in 1836. He, a renowned composer and pianist, was twenty-six years old; she, who was actually called Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin de Dudevant, had just published her first individual novel, ‘Indiana’, and scandalized the society of the time by dressing as a man. Musician and writer lived a love story that lasted a decade, and that took place largely on the island of Mallorca, specifically in Valldemosa.
The Canarian playwright Irma Correa was commissioned to write a text for a cycle on music and literature; she had to be about a composer, and she chose the romance between Chopìn and George Sand. She coincided with the beginning of her writing with the news of his father’s terminal illness, and this fact colored the entire writing of the work, which she titled ‘The Nocturnes’ (like the most famous compositions of the Polish musician).
‘Nocturnos’ sees the light tomorrow, Thursday, in the Margarita Xirgu room of the Spanish Theatre, which closes the season with this production. Magüi Mira directs the show, which is performed by Marta Etura and Jorge Bedoya. «It is a free text -says the director-, which breaks space and time; and I have worked with the same freedom».
«This text is very special to me -acknowledges Irma Correa-. My father’s terminal illness crosses me in a personal moment; I did not know when I began to write this text that these were the last months of his life. I did know that he was sick, but both my mother and I clung to the hope that the doctors gave us. For me it was difficult to accept the farewell; I did not want to do it”.
Farewell is the essence of ‘Los nocturnas’ «George Sand and Chopin did not get to say goodbye -says Irma Correa-; the musician’s sister did not let him in to see him when he was in his last hours; those unspoken words, those looks that did not exist and those hands that no longer touched each other moved me. And when writing the text I realized that the story had touched me so much because it was crossed, precisely, by the farewell.
It is George Sand who tells the story; Marta Etura, who plays the writer, says that he is “a wonderful, fascinating character. She is one of the many women who broke barriers and who decided, through her courage and her intelligence, to break everything in order to live. There is a sentence in the text that I love: ‘I began to dress like a man to be able to go unnoticed as a woman, and to be able to access places I couldn’t access’, because she wanted to live, not act. The show is a very powerful emotional journey, it is, as Magüi told me, a kaleidoscope».
Jorge Bedoya plays Chopin. He does it as an actor and as a pianist; He «he allows me to express myself with two instruments: the word and the piano. Having the ability to travel through the entire range of emotions only with music is wonderful; if you add the word to that, it is everything».
The love story between composer and writer has been the excuse, recognizes Irma Correa, to tell what she wanted to tell. «I have created a dramatic reflection about something I wanted to reach: how can you love a person so much and assume that person is leaving; and in that farewell, what remains with us. I feel that there is an emotional inheritance left by people who leave. When we talk about our parents, there is something from our childhood that is uprooted or detached when they leave; but, at the same time, that childhood is redrawn and resized in a very beautiful way. We give value to things, to looks, to words, to situations that until then we did not.
His doubts, his uncertainties and his pain found their way into the writing of ‘Los nocturnas’, says Irma Correa. and the love story between George Sand and Chopin was ‘a wonderful excuse. It was a very powerful love, something that I had with my father; a love full of friction, something I had with my father; they were complementary, I think they added up both personally and artistically. There was a component of mutual admiration, which must exist in all true love… I had all this with my father. It is a love story linked to music; my father was a great music lover and he especially liked Chopin. My father left listening to ‘The Nocturnes’ by Chopin».
