María is born ‘one day when God was drunk’ in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires. Drawn by the city lights, she leads a tumultuous life in the rough parts of the capital. She eventually becomes a cabaret singer, enjoying success and men’s affections, until she’s rejected and marginalised once again. After her brutal death, she wanders the streets like a shadow, with no memory of her own past. Until one day she miraculously becomes pregnant…

Astor Piazzola, the unrivalled master of the bandoneon, breathed new life into Argentine tango in the 1960s by incorporating new rhythms and instruments. His sole opera is a manifesto for this tango nuevo, steeped in jazz and European classical music. The songs dialogue with spoken passages as the vibrant, passionate score is set to a surrealist text by celebrated poet Horacio Ferrer. María’s story can be seen as an allegory for tango itself: both were born in the poor, cosmopolitan suburbs of Buenos Aires and experienced disdain, fame and decline before reinventing themselves to ensure their futures. But María’s experience can also be viewed as a contemporary, feminine Passion of the Christ: the heroine’s unique personality inspires violence that causes her to suffer, die and transcend her condition to become an eternal icon.

Giulia Giammona is an emerging figure in European musical theatre. Over the course of her career so far she has rediscovered surrealist women authors and explored feminist perspectives on mythology. Eschewing old-fashioned stereotypes, Giammona has cast women in all of the roles. She aims to restore the heroine’s story to her, to question the gendered codes of tango, and to condemn the social mechanisms that lead to the idealisation of women’s bodies and to sexist and sexual violence.