For this original production commissioned by BoCA, Dino D’Santiago was challenged to write a brand new opera bringing together history, culture and multicultural Portuguese identity.

“Adilson” is a five-act opera directed by Dino D’Santiago, based on the original text “Serviço Estrangeiro” by Rui Catalão and musical direction by Martim Sousa Tavares. We follow the journey of a man of African descent, born in Angola to parents from Cape Verde, who has lived in Portugal for over 40 years without ever obtaining Portuguese citizenship. D’Afonsa to his friends, Nuno to his family, Adilson on his passport, his life plays out between waiting rooms, delayed hearings and a bureaucratic maze that prevents him from being fully recognised by the country he has always called home.

More than an individual, Adilson represents thousands of people who have been left behind by the system. The opera transforms the act of waiting into poetry, and invisibility into an act of resistance. At its culmination, we hear a shout that echoes far beyond the stage: “I’m not Portuguese. I’m Portugal. A country in waiting.”
Addressing themes of social injustice, discrimination, human fragility and hope, Dino D’Santiago’s first foray into the world of opera will also mark 50 years since the end of Portugal’s military presence on colonised lands in African territory.