In an original commission and production for the BoCA 2025 biennial, Dino D’Santiago was challenged to premiere an opera that combines history, culture and Portugal’s multicultural identity. “Adilson” is an opera in five acts 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 Cape Verdean parents, who has lived in Portugal for over 40 years - without ever having obtained Portuguese citizenship. Called D’Afonsa by his friends, Nuno by his family, Adilson on his passport, his life unfolds between waiting rooms, postponed processes and a bureaucratic maze that prevents him from being fully recognized by the country where he has always lived.
More than an individual, Adilson represents thousands of people left on the margins of the system. The opera turns waiting into poetry and turns invisibility into an act of resistance. At the culmination of the work, we hear the cry that echoes beyond the stage: “I am not Portuguese. I am Portugal. A country waiting.”
Addressing themes such as social injustice, discrimination, human frailty and hope, Dino D’Santiago’s first foray into opera also marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Portuguese military presence on colonial lands in African territories.
