Aesthetics and politics in contemporary Chilean opera: neo-modern identities in some opera productions by Miguel Farías and Sebastián Errázuriz

Abstract

Despite numerous investigations in the field of Chilean opera, most of them of historicist nature; there are still scarces, or almost null, those that explore in contemporary operatic productions, probably due to the deficit of exponents and works because of costs that an assembly of these characteristics implies. The present work tries to carry out an analysis of the contemporary Chilean opera of the 21st century, proposing a crossing of readings between musical languages and aesthetics of the works as a reflection and product of identities in the context of Neomodernity. Through three types of analysis, we will conclude that the sensitive perception of this state of culture is an aesthetic phenomenon insofar as it accounts for and produces processes of identity subjectivation, and in that condition, aesthetics is the meeting point between art / music and politics. The analyzed works propose interpretations of reality, on the one hand in the extra-musical, and on the other hand, through the cultural imposition that musical languages that the composers assume as their own carry. The latter will justify, as will be explained later, the use of hybrid and eclectic forms in contemporary opera and the development of a latent musical / cultural movement based on "self-exoticism".