Apuntes sobre Pizarro

Apuntes sobre Pizarro (Notes on Pizarro), written in February 2007, was a preliminary study for opera that I composed between the summer of that year and the end of 2009. The project to compose an opera came about when I started a new professional relationship with the Conservatory of the National University of Colombia in 2005. This relationship led me develop several creative projects in addition to my teaching work. This was the first project I undertook for the University and is based on the novel The Last Day of Francisco Pizarro by the Peruvian writer Alberto Massa, to whom these Notes are dedicated.

The five movements of Apuntes sobre Pizarro, a work orchestrated for the clarinet, trumpet, fagot, violin, viola, cello and double bass, are: I. Soñando con La Zarza (Dreaming of La Zarza); II. La otra visión (The Other Vision); III. El esplendor manchado, (The Tarnished Splendour); IV. Domingo en Los Reyes (Sunday in Los Reyes)and V. Las traiciones (The Betrayals).

The first movement takes us back to the morning of the day on which Francisco Pizarro, el Marqués (The Marquis), died: as he wakes, he visualises his childhood in La Zarza, Extremadura. La otra visión refers to the eyes of Atahualpa fixed in Pizarro’s memory; El esplendor manchado pays tribute to Cuzco, a city that was defiled and humiliated during the Conquest; Domingo en Los Reyes is about the day that Pizarro was assassinated by supporters of Diego de Almagro in ancient Lima; and finally, La traición, a common denominator of both the Castilian and the Inca sides during the Conquest.

                                                                                                                                                            Moisès Bertran