Manuel Busto: "Flamenco must be studied with the same rigor as Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner"

• Archive Read all the interviews of the 'contra'

Manuel Bust

.

Seville, 1987. The composer and orchestra director premieres 'La mujer tigre' on March 12 at the Teatro Maestranza, a work in which opera and flamenco are on stage "on equal terms".

How did you decide to become a conductor? I always say that conducting found me.

A friend asked me to sign up for a course because there was a free place.

There I met the teacher Norman Milanés Moreno, who was director of the Great Theater of Havana for 40 years.

When the course was over, the teacher talked to my parents and told them that if I wanted to dedicate myself to conducting and worked with him in depth, I could travel the world with a baton in hand.

I would be 15 or 16 years old.

And that's where I got in. How was the experience with the Cuban orchestra director?I studied as in the past, as an artisan and his apprentice.

I was there almost 24 hours a day, in the summer I would go for two or three weeks, the bridges... The teacher revolutionized my mind because he rightly defended

that an orchestra conductor must know everything and have a total culture. His grandfather also got him into the music bug. He wanted me to earn a living as a musician.

I come from a family of workers and my grandfather wanted me to have a more comfortable life.

Music was his passion.

He played a lot of instruments.

He said that except for the piano, the saxophone and the clarinet he had played everything.

On the 12th you premiere an opera composed by you in Seville.

What novelty does your show bring? This opera is the result of a path of experimentation.

In it, the impressive ability to generate emotions of opera and the impressive ability to generate emotions of flamenco are on equal terms on stage and that is something that has rarely been done. It is curious that they are on the same plane.

From the classical sphere, flamenco is usually viewed with a certain disdain. I know and admire both worlds.

As a conductor, I come from the world of opera, which has its rhythm and trade, which I am lucky enough to know well because I have worked as an assistant with the best conductors in the world.

Being from Seville, I have great flamenco artists close at hand.

When I really got into flamenco, I was with singer Miguel Ortega, winner of the La Unión Minera Lamp and one of the artists who knows what he sings and how to explain it. they have to do. Well, with this opera, the Teatro de la Maestranza is exploring other possibilities to engage the public.

I'm not looking for merchandise that attracts the public, but I am aware that fans of flamenco, lyrical,

theater and contemporary music can be attracted by this work.

Tickets are flying.

It is a magnet where very different worlds are meeting. Different and irreconcilable worlds? Flamenco and opera even seem opposed, but on stage we are going to see that this is not the case. You are classically trained and a great student of flamenco. Although I don't perform flamenco, I have studied it conscientiously.

I gave cantaor Miguel Ortega classical classes and he paid me by allowing me to go to his rehearsals.

I would sit next to him and then ask him.

He wanted to know the codes, what cannot be described, the improvised... It has taken me 15 years to have the knowledge and experience. I don't know if his classical colleagues immerse themselves in flamenco. All the musicians to interpret Mozart we go to Vienna,

but I haven't seen anyone who goes down to the street to see what a bulería or cante flamenco sounds like.

They are big names and great directors, but nobody has been interested in knowing where Falla drinks from.

Knowing flamenco is not listening to two cantes God knows whose, where, when and in what way.

It must be studied with the same rigor as the classical tradition, the sonata, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner... it has the same richness and the same difficulty. You escaped the confinement of the coronavirus pandemic in style.

Yes, at the National Taiwan Opera with

It must be studied with the same rigor as the classical tradition, the sonata, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner... it has the same richness and the same difficulty. You escaped the confinement of the coronavirus pandemic in style.

Yes, at the National Taiwan Opera with

It must be studied with the same rigor as the classical tradition, the sonata, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner... it has the same richness and the same difficulty. You escaped the confinement of the coronavirus pandemic in style.

Yes, at the National Taiwan Opera with

and

.

It was the first time that this double production was done in Asia.

They contacted me and I had the opportunity to debut there in September 2020, in a large theater that, for the first time since the pandemic broke out, opened without capacity restrictions.

I was lucky to be able to be there as in a small bubble.

I was able to enter and leave the country without problems, although the day I was leaving, all the flights were red except mine.

How do you see musical training in schools? It doesn't seem right to me that it is considered to be removed or to be in the background.

In the conservatory it is not well focused because there is a certain coldness and you cannot engage.

But you have to educate.

The more you know, the more you enjoy music.

It's like with wine.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Seville

• theater

• Flemish

• music

• Final Interview

The final interviewEsperanza Fernández: "In the great theaters of the world, people cry with emotion with flamenco"

The final interviewOlga Pericet: "Flamenco can be taught in a classroom, but you have to go to a tablao and to a party"

MusicArcadi Espada: "Flamenco is an art of elites that are often illiterate"

See links of interest

• Last News

• Work calendar 2022

• Home THE WORLD today

• War Ukraine Russia

• Atalanta - Sampdoria

• Granada CF - Cadiz

• Malaga - FC Cartagena