Reflections on Constança Capdeville’s music-theatre

Abstract

Constança Capdeville is the greatest representative of music-theatre in Portugal. Her compositions extend beyond the musical by including extramusical features such as props, lights, images, theatrical elements, and magnetic tape recordings. These features were deployed in her works whether to establish environments, emotional states or to define spaces. Capdeville's music-theatre works, despite their success, also caused controversial reactions in the public. From her perspective, Opera and the traditional concert had finished and hence the concept of the stage required rethinking. Capdeville stated that often had to deal with this problem by creating her own stages. In this paper, it is discussed the concept of music-theatre within the context of Portuguese contemporary music and its influences over Capdeville’s compositions.