GURIDI: MAGICAL BIDAIA

SALVA is twelve years old, and everything he knows about life, he learned from video games. He knows that he needs to monitor his health level. That everything can be bought with gold. That he needs experience points to level up. He knows that he is the hero of the story, and the death of his parents in a car accident is just a backstory, so that other people feel sorry for him and rush to help him.

Salva knows that the world is a sandbox-style open game, where he can explore at his own pace, and it only exists so that he can play. He knows that the obstacles preventing him from fulfilling his desires are puzzles he must solve. He also knows that the characters he interacts with are not important, which is why he can deceive them, harm them, or even sacrifice them for his own benefit.

Salva is very skilled at playing video games, whether they are strategy games, role-playing games (RPGs), or shooting zombies (FPS), but this new game he downloaded is going to be a real challenge for him because the ultimate goal is to achieve EMPATHY, the ability to put himself in other people’s shoes and feel what they feel. And unlike solving puzzles or shooting zombies, Salva is really bad at that.

Jesús Guridi’s music (so closely bound to the Sociedad Coral de Bilbao) amasses many influences and offers us a very personal, recognisable result. The music in this show, written for a children’s choir, combines the harmonic wealth of the accomplished organist, the refinement of the Parisian student soaking up all the new music in the early 20th century and knowledge of folklore and classic polyphony. All this and more in an up-to-the-minute show brimming with sensitivity.

Surtitled show.