Traces of a collaborative process between composer and performer/interpreter in the creation of the experimental opera “Helena e seu ventríloquo”

Abstract

This text aims to think and analyze the collaborative process between Doriana Mendes and Daniel Quaranta in the creation of the experimental electroacoustic opera Helena and her Ventriloquist (2019). The opera consists of an introduction and seven acts, with video and sound projected through a multichannel octophonic system. The duration of the work is 60 minutes. The music and script were written by Daniel Quaranta. The dramaturgy, including the live scenes and the ones recorded in the studio plus the visual production of the video, were made by the duo with the collaboration of Aurélio Oliosi on camera and Ricardo Vieira in the video editing and mastering of the final product. In this article, we present an account of the collaborative creative experience. This implies accepting the co-authorship of this work (Mendes-Quaranta), through a method of “constructive partnership” in which neither part was independent of another. This “rizhomatic plot” (dialogue, rehearsal, discussion, tests, failures, hits, reflection etc.) enabled the creative horizontality of a transdisciplinary process. The creative collaborators noticed that in order to establish the practical construction of the aesthetic object it was necessary to join the knowledge and specific skills of both which amplified the traditional creative boundaries of the composer-interpreter interface.