Carmina Burana', a project with 270 young people from four institutions, will be performed at the MUN and the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid.

The production of Carmina Burana from Museo Universidad de Navarra arrives this Sunday, March 26 (6 p.m., tickets sold out), to its Theater and next April 11 to the Symphonic Hall of the National Auditorium of Music, in Madrid. 270 young people, members of the Orquesta Sinfónica y el Coro Universidad de Navarra, the Coro Juvenil del Orfeón Pamplonés and the Coro de Jóvenes de la Comunidad de Madrid will perform Carl Orff's classic, conducted by Borja Quintas. The Escolanía del Orfeón Pamplonés in Pamplona, and the Coro de Niños de la Comunidad de Madrid, in the Auditorio Nacional.

They are joined by soloists Estíbaliz Arroyo, soprano and Aitor Garitano, tenor -both proposed by Musikene, Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco-, Alejandro von Büren (Madrid) -proposed by the Escuela Superior de Canto de Madrid-, and Iago García (Pamplona) -student of the Escuela Superior de Música de Cataluña-. For the Pamplona performance, the show has a careful staging that uses projections and lighting designed by the playwright Liuba Cid, and includes some voices that will lead the audience to better understand the work.

COLLABORATION BETWEEN INSTITUTIONS

The project is promoted by the Campus Creativo Museum area, which seeks to contribute to the integral formation of the students of the University of Navarra and the development of their artistic talents, as well as their professional skills and personal development. In this sense, the Symphony Orchestra, Choir and theater groups of the University of Navarra collaborate annually with different formations and travel to perform in other large auditoriums, such as the meeting and subsequent welcome concert last August with the Orquesta Juvenil Nacional del SODRE, from Uruguay; or the production of La zarzuela de los paraguasin the spring of 2022, in co-production with AGAO.

This year, the idea was to undertake a project along these lines, although different from an artistic point of view. "Last year we did a zarzuela and we did not want to repeat something scenic, such as an opera. And we decided to stage Carmina Burana, which allows us to collaborate with a large choral mass, a very interesting experience. We want to have different experiences in the field of music, from symphonic concerts to lyrical galas, and a project like this had not been done so far," explains Carlos Bernar, head of Campus Creativo. About the concert, he points out that "it is a complex work both from a musical and choral point of view, very demanding, which is a challenge for the students. In addition, it allowed us to collaborate with other ensembles and for the students to travel. It is a very interesting project".

Producing a piece of these characteristics has been a challenge, first of all, at a musical and scenic level, due to the demands of the work itself. But it has also been a challenge at the production and coordination level due to the number of participants and the fact that they are all students, so we have worked hard to combine their academic schedules with their dedication to the project in rehearsals.

This type of experience allows students to "combine music, their passion, with their academic studies, and makes them better students, better people and better professionals, whether they are doctors, architects, philosophers... It is in line with what we work on at MUN. We seek not only to train them in the arts, but also to help them grow as people.

With the work done to date and the tickets sold out in Pamplona, expectations are very positive. "Although all the pieces have to fit together like a puzzle, it is a complicated project, but at the same time exciting. Besides, Carmina Burana is an epic work and I am sure that the audience will enjoy it very much. For the students, playing in front of such a large audience is intimidating, but, at the same time, it is very exciting. We are very happy with the evolution of the students, who have worked very hard and the result is going to be spectacular", says Bernar.

THE WORK

For this composition, Orff based himself on a collection of medieval poems written mostly in Latin, German and French, in which he extols the pleasure of living, the interest in earthly pleasures, carnal love and the enjoyment of nature, always with a critical and satirical view of the social and ecclesiastical classes of the time.

Orff wrote this scenic cantata in 1936-1937, at a time in his career when he decided to leave behind the chromaticism he had cultivated in his youthful works, to give free rein to his obsession for simple melodies and primitive rhythms. He found the ideal material in this collection of 12th and 13th century Goliard poems. The resulting score surrenders completely to the more visceral dimension of the music and each movement is built on the basis of sections that are repeated over and over again. The choruses and arias are also of great effect and theatricality, as Orff did not conceive the work to be performed in concert version but as a total spectacle which he called Theatrum Mundi and in which every note was to be closely linked to dance, visual designs and stage action.