Opereta

Opereta, 1980

The Price of Money is Average Balance

My commentary

An event at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo in September 1980, to which I was invited, brought together some of us who performed performances. At the time, I went to a bank to settle some accounts and, sitting with an attendant, I heard: "but you don't have an average balance!" I tried to argue and heard explanations that I didn't understand, which continued with every argument of mine. It only ended when I gave up trading and left with the conviction that the price of money is the average balance. Hence this piece that I wrote, generally classified under the title Opereta, but which has a longer title: Opereta Buférrima, O Preço do Dinheiro é o Saldo Médio (the Price of Money is the Average Balance). I imagined to reconstitute the discussion in the bank with the confused noises of high heels tapping on the wooden floor, typewriters, whispering conversations, others aloud ..., Then I built a huge rattle (matraca), one of those instruments with which the salesmen of biju call attention at traffic lights (“matraca” is also, as they say, those who talk a lot); I gathered varied party whistles, separated by species in boxes, and invited Aguilar to act as a partner.

The giant rattle was on the floor between us, he with a T-shirt that read the Manager on one side, and me on the other, with the T-shirt that read the Beople inGeneral. And the rattle was thrown from one to the other, with a deafening noise at each move. In the meantime the party whistles were distributed in the audience, in batches, by groups of audiences, so that the commotion was installed in the competition of which group made the most noise.

Operetta has been performed in other occasions, in different places.
_{Gabriel Borba, 2018}