Stage Director

EL CIMARRÓN

Festival d’Aix-en Provence, 2026

Photos: Jean-Louis Fernandez

About

First performed in 1970 at the Aldeburgh Festival, EL CIMARRÓN is a music theatre recital for four players: percussion, guitar, flute and voice. This new production, created for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, premiered at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in July 2026.

EL CIMARRÓN is based on the testimony of Esteban Montejo as originally told to Cuban writer and ethnographer Miguel Barnet in interviews conducted in Havana, Cuba in the 1960s. As a formerly enslaved man, born in 1860 when Cuba was still under Spanish colonial rule, Montejo had a unique perspective on life: not only did he see a huge amount of social and political change in Cuba across the length of his extraordinarily long life (he died in 1973 at the age of 112; he was already in his early 100s when Barnet interviewed him), but he was one of the few surviving cimarrónes - runaway slaves - able to give a detailed account of life as a slave on a sugar plantation.

Montejo first attempted escape from the Flor de Sagua plantation at the age of 10, but was captured, beaten and returned to work in the sugar cane fields before his second, successful, attempt to escape a short while later. In EL CIMARRÓN, the audience follows the story of Montejo’s early life as a slave; his time as a cimarrón, living alone in the mountains for years as a young boy; the disillusionment of life in the immediate aftermath of the abolition of slavery (1886); and his time fighting in the War of Independence (1895-1898).

In Henze’s remarkable music theatre piece, Montejo’s story is vividly brought to life in a musical world that captures the power and potential of voice, percussion, flutes and guitar. EL CIMARRÓN weaves this hugely expressive and arresting sonic world together with a libretto that distils Montejo’s words and worldview into a poignant and emotional piece that is a testimony to one man’s strength and purpose in defiance of the most brutal of circumstances.

For more information about the production, please visit the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence website here.

Creative Team

Composer: Hans Werner Henze
Librettist: Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Based on the life of Esteban Montejo and BIOGRAFÍA DE UN CIMARRÓN by Miguel Barnet

Director: Elayce Ismail

Set & Costume Designer: Rosie Elnile
Lighting Designer: Azusa Ono
Stage Manager: David Herrezuelo

Musical Supervisor: Carlo Emilio Tortarolo

Cast

Baritone: Iván García
Flutes: Daniel Shao
Guitar: Jean-Marc Zvellenreuther
Percussion: Minh-Tâm Nguyen