FULL THE MAKING OF MISA CRIOLLA (Ramirez) Documentary 1990 JOSÉ CARRERAS
Popular Singers in this Opera Recording
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: THE MAKING OF MISA CRIOLLA
- Composer: Ramirez Ariel
- Libretto:
- Venue & Opera Company: Barcelona, Mallorca
- Recorded: 1990
- Type: Other
- Singers: José Carreras
- Conductor:
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director: Andrea Thoma
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- TV Director: Andrea Thoma
- Date Published: 1990
- Format: Unknown
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The Misa Criolla (English: ” Creole Mass”) is a mass by the Argentine composer Ariel Ramírez for 2 solo tenors , mixed choir , percussion , piano and traditional instruments of the Andean region .
Ariel Ramírez composed the mass in 1963 and 1964. His first inspiration to write a religious work came to him in the 1950s, when he was still an unknown musician and lived in a monastery in West Germany (Würzburg), far from his South American homeland. There he met the sisters Elisabeth and Regina Brückner one day, who told him that a beautiful mansion in front of the monastery had been part of a concentration camp (KZ) during the Nazi era – just a few years earlier – and that they both brought food to the prisoners night after night for eight months, despite the death penalty.
In 1954, Ariel Ramírez took up his idea again on a sea voyage from Liverpool to Buenos Aires and decided to one day write a musical work in honor of these two German sisters: “Something profound, religious, in honor of life. [Something] that includes people beyond their own faith, ethnicity, skin color or origin.” Due to a translation error, it is often claimed that they were nuns. In fact, there were five sisters. But only two of them spoke sufficient Spanish.
In the 1960s, Ariel Ramírez discussed his idea with a childhood friend and priest, Father Antonio Osvaldo Catena, then president of the Episcopal Commission for South America, who had the idea of “composing a Mass with rhythms and musical forms of this country”.
After the first drafts were made, it was another priest and choirmaster, Father Jésus Gabriel Segade, who made the choral arrangements. Father Segade was also the director of the choir (Cantoría de la Basílica del Socorro) in the first version of the Creole Mass.
The Misa Criolla is considered, together with Navidad Nuestra, to be Ramírez’s best-known composition and is therefore considered the most important work of Argentine sacred music far beyond the borders of South America . In Latin America, it is one of the most popular works of Christian music, which is also very popular with amateur choirs. It is considered an example of the inculturation of Christianity in South America.