Venus y Adonis

An overlooked masterpiece by Spanish composer José de Nebra finally sees the light thanks to a world premiere recording by the ensemble Los Elementos, conducted by Alberto Miguélez Rouco. Written in 1729, Venus y Adonis fuses mythological drama with Baroque flair in a style that bridges Italy and Spain. The rarely heard opera of striking intensity is brought to life through ambitious musicological reconstruction and a young, dedicated cast.

This recording marks the world premiere of Venus y Adonis by Nebra. What prompted you to bring this forgotten pastoral melodrama back to life, and why do you believe it’s essential to understanding 18th-century Spanish opera? 

After recording his zarzuelas Vendado es Amor, no es ciego and Donde hay violencia, no hay culpa, I was very keen to record Venus y Adonis—not only because it is a magnificent piece, but also because it had never been released on CD. Moreover, having to reconstruct the missing parts (only the vocal lines, violin and bass were preserved) allowed me to delve even deeper into Nebra’s writing. Venus y Adonis is one of the rare surviving examples of Spanish-language opera from the early decades of the 18th century. It allows us to see how Italian musical influence had fully entered the Spanish musical landscape, particularly through the recitativo-aria structure, in contrast with the traditional refrain-strophe format previously favoured in Spain. Yet many aspects of the Hispanic traditions are maintained: all roles—male and female—are sung by women; the chorus plays an active role in the story, even participating in the recitatives to comment on the action, which is highly unusual in Europe. Alongside the serious characters, the opera also includes the figure of the gracioso (in this case, a comic duo) who perform the most popular arias, including a fandango. Although it is only a single act, its length is ideal for a stand-alone performance and offers a great variety of arias for each character.

You had to reconstruct much of the score from manuscript fragments. Could you tell us about the musical and stylistic challenges this posed, and your approach to remaining faithful to Nebra’s universe?  

Reconstructing this opera was my main project during the early months of the pandemic in 2020, and the process continued until 2023, gradually refined through research and the study of nearly all of José de Nebra’s surviving works. From the outset, my aim was to rebuild the opera as faithfully as possible—essentially to let Nebra’s talent shine, while limiting my own intervention as much as possible. Reconstructing the string parts was relatively straightforward since the first violin part survived, providing the orchestra’s melodic outline. For the winds and brass, I studied all his stage works in depth—zarzuelas, operas, autos sacramentales and other minor compositions—as well as his sacred music, searching for harmonic similarities and identifying motifs and figures that could integrate seamlessly into Venus y Adonis. As a result, 95% of what you hear is genuinely Nebra. I also chose to add an overture by orchestrating one of his harpsichord suites, whose pastoral character suits the opera perfectly.   

The work seems to blend classical mythology, popular humour, and dramatic emotion. How did you work with the singers and Los Elementos to bring out these multiple registers?  

Indeed, on the one hand we have the four main roles—Venus, Adonis, Mars, and Cybele—who are the protagonists of the story and sing the more serious arias: battle, dreams, death, vengeance, and so on. On the other hand, the two comic characters, Clarín and Celfa, provide comic relief, playing out a love story completely separate from the opera’s main plot. Clarín has a syllabic aria reminiscent of a Rossini opera, while Celfa shows off her acting skills in a fandango. At the end of the opera, they perform a completely histrionic “chicken duet.” When working with the singers and the orchestra, the most important goal is to convey the meaning and emotion of the text. With the singers, I focus on understanding how the melody is constructed—in Nebra’s case, it is deeply tied to the words. Whenever there’s a coloratura, a leap, or a dissonance, it always serves the text. He never uses stock formulas just to fill in the melody—there’s always a theatrical or emotional reason behind every note. We also aimed to clearly differentiate how the serious characters sing from the comic ones. The former have expansive arias with coloraturas, trills, and beautifully phrased lines requiring a more lyrical vocal approach, while the graciosos rely almost entirely on the text to bring their parts to life. As one of my goals is to enable non-Spanish singers to perform this repertoire, a major part of the work also involved achieving the best possible Spanish pronunciation and prosody—and I’m very happy with the result. With the orchestra, we sought to amplify the singers’ dramatic power and also to act as a sort of subtext, commenting precisely on the vocal lines. This gives the music a depth I find very compelling, because the orchestra becomes another character in the drama rather than just an accompaniment. This greatly engages the musicians, who feel they are part of the theatrical action. I also placed enormous importance on the recitatives, which are numerous in this opera since there is no spoken dialogue. They are highly concise and very effective in moving the action forward. For the cello ornamentation, I drew on examples from works by Francisco Corselli, Nebra’s colleague at the Royal Chapel of Madrid, which I believe greatly enhance the rhetorical impact of the drama.