Towards the mid-seventeenth century, when Venetian opera consolidated as a new musical
genre for public performance, the singing of women took on a distinct prominence for the first
time. I would like to think that Ruidosa, Adriana García’s latest work, is an aria from a
contemporary opera where she plays the role of an anti-diva. This aria tells the story of a
feminine voice that gets into an argument with herself. The singer stands at full center stage
facing the camera with a hieratic attitude. At first her voice seems naive and angelic, a white
voice mimicking the sound of a car engine. Later on she utters a sharp “no” followed by a shy
“yes.” At other moments she sings melodies and then leaves them floating. She also makes
sounds that within a tonal system would be considered “noises.” Minutes later the voice grows
more vigorous and departs from the initial timbre.
Little by little, from the back of the stage, four strange machines advance towards her. As the
minutes go by and they come closer to the singer, the sound of an engine grows stronger. Her
voice also picks up. She closes her performance with a sentence: this voice is mine. From the
initial wavering heard fifteen minutes earlier, when she argued between a “yes” and a “no,” she
now moves into self-assertion. She ends her story like a Venetian prima donna, although she is
not a professional singer or a virtuoso, and although her bodily demeanor is that of an anti-diva.
She has infiltrated the machines’ audio systems to get them to amplify her own voice, so that it
booms. And even so that she may hear herself and finally say that, yes, that voice is indeed
hers.
Nadia Moreno Moya
May 2020