'One Hundred Years of Solitude' revives at the Teatro Colón with a visual and audio journey to Macondo.

Fifty-eight years ago, the Argentine publishing house Editorial Sudamericana published a novel by a young Colombian writer, and the Latin American literary world would never be the same since. In commemoration of this anniversary, One Hundred Years of Solitude will be revisited this Saturday at 8 p.m. (in a single performance at the Teatro Colón's Experimental Center ) through images and music that recreate the world of the brilliant Gabriel García Márquez , in a production by the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo in Bogotá.

Reflections of Macondo , defined as a concert-installation , bears the seal of the Colombian photographer Óscar Perfer (who proposes an introspection into the work of García Márquez through portraits of his characters, with contemporary features) and the Spanish pianist María José de Bustos , in charge of a selection of musical fragments that in turn seek to be sound portraits of each of the main characters.

Bustos, born in Spain and based in Colombia, says the idea for the novel was sparked when she learned, at an exhibition, that García Márquez had written this novel primarily listening to the music of Bartók . Her admiration for the Hungarian composer's work and her exposure to Perfer's photographs led her to create this project with him.

Long before settling in the writer's homeland, Bustos had read One Hundred Years of Solitude in her youth in the Basque Country . This reading not only sparked a literary wonder in her but somehow her infatuation transcended into the musical: " I was captivated by his fascinating, creative, excessive, and so beautiful writing , which awakened in me the constant cadence in writing and the dynamics in music. I indefinitely seek that conjunction that exists in both genres in each of my performances, trying to achieve that prodigious excellence that defines Gabo's work."

During the concert, pieces by Debussy, Schubert, Chopin, Larrañaga, Sibelius, Brahms, Ravel, Turina, Satie, Mompou, and, of course, Bartók appear (in a coordinated way, the mechanics of which are kept a mystery by the artists and which will have to be discovered this Saturday); each one seeks to represent a character.

Bustos describes the selection process as “long, very respectful, and interesting . Óscar had already photographed his collection of characters, always from his contemporary perspective, in search of current phenotypes that matched his image of each character. We searched for and studied short texts that described scenes to solidly support each photograph. And finally , we launched into the music with the goal of reflecting the soul of the characters . We listened to dozens of works from universal piano literature that could be assembled naturally with text and image. It wasn't easy for each character to appropriate their music, and the drawing of the texts helped complete a ductile, effective, and surprising panorama. Today we can't imagine them with any other structure; it's as if they had made the choice independently of us . Their looks attest to this.”

Perfer, for his part, reveals: “Some pieces allude to the sublime, others to nostalgia, others to the dreamlike. The text, fragments of the novel, acts as a connecting thread that weaves together a sensorial and narrative experience. It is not a literal adaptation, but rather a multiple invocation of Macondo through images, sounds, and words . We see the music, we hear the images.”

Born in Chiquinquirá, a town in central Colombia with deep cultural roots, Perfer discovered his calling for portraiture during his childhood, connected to native faces and religious iconography. Like most Colombians, the artist first encountered One Hundred Years of Solitude during his adolescence at school, but the stories of the Buendía family resonated differently in his soul.

“I remember feeling like I wasn't just reading a novel, but rather peeking into a surreal dimension that felt strangely familiar. As someone born in a small town marked by popular religiosity, everyday myths, and legends, the world of Macondo didn't seem like a distant fantasy, but rather a poetic extension of what I was already experiencing. The endless rains, the familiar repetitions in its surnames, the symbolic force of daily life in a village—all of this resonated with me very strongly. Macondo, in a way, was already within me before I read it ,” he explains.

If every reader forges in their mind the traits of the characters whose stories are conveyed in words, it seems difficult to portray from flesh-and-blood beings the creatures imagined by Gabo and known by thousands of readers around the world.

For Perfer, the process of creating the portraits was "almost ritualistic , a patient search for ordinary people who could carry the subject's emotional sway, and who appeared one by one over time. Basically, I wanted them to have a story in their faces."

Together with his ex-partner, cultural manager Sonia Ezquerrena, Perfer began the search in 2014 based on a profile created for each character.

“Each portrait is based on a reading and analysis we conducted not only of the character's physicality but also of their emotional and symbolic environment . It's not about literally representing the Buendías, as it's a purely artistic and personal proposal, but rather about embodying their essences: Aureliano's melancholy, Úrsula's strength, Remedios's fragility, the beauty of time suspended in Macondo . My premise was to find the visual syntax that these portraits would have, and how I would approach them. The result was using a classic lighting technique that allowed me to highlight their details and that didn't distract from my intended purpose with elements. I used visual elements such as light, which evoke the atmosphere of the novel: dust, textures, golden light, dense shadows. More than recreating, I wanted to suggest. Portraits are mirrors: they don't illustrate, they reflect,” she says.

Both artists agree on the importance of presenting this project in the largest theater in Buenos Aires , the city that introduced the novel to the world, and that the performance will close the circle that began almost six decades ago.

Perfer adds: “Returning with a proposal that reinterprets that universe from a visual and aural perspective is an act of gratitude and a reconnection with the work of Gabriel García Márquez . It's also a recognition of the greatness of Gabo's work: although profoundly Colombian, his novel belongs to all the corners where the magical and the real coexist . Taking our project there is a tribute to the book, the reader, and the memory that unites us through Macondo.”

Reflections of Macondo , only performance on June 7 at 8 pm at the Teatro Colón Experimentation Center (Viamonte 1168).