Les Luthiers begins its final descent from the charts with an international tour

The time has come to begin the descent of the stages for the company Les Luthiers, the ingenious Argentine musical comedy group that mixed measured, scathing and even surreal humor with the fusion of instruments created with everyday gadgets in a show of theatrical skills. which gave them international fame and recognition in a long career whose end was announced in January.

A range of instruments of wind, strings and percussion with bizarre names and specific uses for the staging of some of his works were created over 56 years of tours of theatrical stages and recording studios for the sale of records that constituted for decades the other great avenue of income for this theater company.

Les Luthiers “never lost their humor and have a great category” he comments to the voice of america in Washington the Argentine theater director, Mario Marcel, who in the flourishing decade of the 1960s also moved in the cultural bohemia of Buenos Aires in the South American country.

The chances of fate and the tables -he says- led him to make friends with some members of the group that began to form in the cauldron of student girls who abounded in the universities of the main cities; Events such as the University Choir Festival in 1965 surprised with the participation of a group of young people from the University of Buenos Aires who presented a humorous music show with an orchestral montage with invented instruments made from simple materials.

The soloist and creator of that show was Gerardo Masana, who would later be the founder of the Les Luthiers company, although he had a short life because he died in 1973, the group continued on its way with the already consolidated creative baggage.

Marcel says that the success of Les Luthiers could not be explained without a growing middle class in Argentina and other South American countries and Spain, who welcomed it, “because they understood that humor and could afford it” also as entertainment in cosmopolitan life, but also because you had to have some references to decode that comedy.

“It is very difficult to add humor to music in such a big country, so clever and so beautiful. Too bad it is full of Argentines! And they get it, work humor with nothing more than words and sounds”, says Marcel to VOA.

Tour with Mastropiero

To say goodbye to the tables, the last members of the company closed the work cycle after almost six decades, the reasons being the advanced age of the septuagenarians who have been in constant creative fusion throughout this long journey. Others died in recent years.

When they announced the dissolution of the Carlos López Puccio group in January, he cited age as a key factor: “This year I will be 77 years old, and Jorge [Maronna], 75. We feel very vital, and artistically we believe we are at our best moment; but as we approach 80 our muscles and joints anticipate that they will soon begin to present impediments to us ”, he pointed out on social networks.

But before it became clear that they would not leave just like that, first they had to do the national and international farewell with one of the most acclaimed shows throughout time by the public, and tuned for a high-flying farewell, ‘More setbacks by Mastropiero’, a journey through the history of the company and the career of the fictional composer of Les Luthiers, Johann Sebastian Mastropiero.

The tour of his homeland and with the Argentine public in the post-pandemic period took over the theaters from January 12 to the end of February from Buenos Aires to the cities of the interior of the country.

And this Friday began in Ecuador the international tour With two performances scheduled, Mexico follows in several states, next month they arrive in Colombia, both the capital and the interior of the country. In principle, a more extensive tour that included Chile and Costa Rica had been planned, but the dates were cancelled.

Spain, one of its squares with a very loyal and robust audience, will welcome them for two months until the curtain falls on July 9 in Barcelona, ​​after weeks of billboards in Madrid and Seville, according to the group’s official website.

Precisely Spain has given the highest recognition to the group, from the Royal House and the town halls, so much so that they have Spanish citizenship granted for high merits and contributions to Ibero-American culture.

The last renewal of the group happened in 2019, with the death of Marcos Mundstock in 2020, for the final stretch the group was integrated -apart from the original members Jorge Maronna and Carlos López Puccio- by Roberto Antier, Tomás Mayer-Wolf, Martín O ‘Connor and Horacio Tato Turano, and the substitutes Santiago Otero Ramos and Pablo Rabinovich.

until the final judgment

The theater director Mario Marcel says that in the public of Les Luthiers something was combined that could be defined as superimposed complicity where the memory of a long career predominates with the continuous succession of members.

“People handle the memory much more (in the current show) this gentleman speaks that makes me remember Mundstock who spoke in a very different special way, then it makes us remember him and we automatically applaud even though he has already passed away,” he comments to VOA.

And when the end is near, what better time to remember one of the loudest and even darkest instruments created by Les Luthiers for the work ‘The last day’ in a class of lutherapy.

That ‘exorcise’ to exorcise the devil’ and thereby stop the arrival of the antichrist, shown in the show, in a confusing situation where the singing clerics say “the day of the end is coming, the day of the end is coming” and where they consider how to interrupt the pregnancy and with it the arrival of the prophecy, which among the setbacks is fulfilled, but when it is revealed it does not seem to be so different from the already existing earthly hardships, so they decide to welcome the newborn in the face of the final judgment. Thus comes the end.

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