Mistralianas is a cycle of three songs for soprano and orchestra based on poems by Gabriela Mistral: “La trocada” (“The Changed Woman”), “La abandonada” (“The Abandoned Woman”), and “Todas íbamos a ser reinas” (“We Were All Going to Be Queens”).

The three poems are connected by the idea of transformation. In each of them, a person faces a change that alters the way they see themselves: a sense of estrangement from one’s own body or identity, the mark left by abandonment, and the distance between childhood dreams and the life that ultimately unfolded. In these poems, transformation also means losing something: an image of oneself, a love, or an imagined future.

Mistral’s poetry moves constantly between the intimate and the collective. Her language may seem direct and simple, but it contains landscapes, memories, and images of great intensity, connected to Chile and Latin America. In composing Mistralianas, I did not seek to illustrate the poems or to translate each of their images literally into music. Instead, I tried to create a distinct musical world for each text, through which the voice passes.
In “La trocada,” the orchestra creates an unstable and fragmented environment. Shifting meters, sudden contrasts, and gestures that move quickly from one instrumental group to another produce a sense of continuous transformation. The soprano emerges from within this orchestral material, as though the voice itself were also affected by what surrounds it.

“La abandonada” introduces a more physical world, closer to song. The voice is supported by rhythms and resonances that suggest the persistence of memory and emotional pain. At one particular moment, the guitar becomes more prominent alongside the percussion, evoking the gesture of Latin American popular song, particularly the tradition associated with figures such as Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara.

“Todas íbamos a ser reinas” is the longest and most varied movement. Its changes of tempo, rhythm, and texture follow the story of the four girls and the contrast between what they dreamed of and what their lives eventually became. The music constantly changes character, as though moving through different moments of memory. Toward the end, the orchestra becomes increasingly quiet, leaving the voice surrounded by scattered and distant sounds.

Throughout the cycle, the orchestra does not simply accompany the soprano. At times it confronts her; at others it surrounds her or transforms along with her voice. Mistralianas is a work about the different forms that transformation takes in Mistral’s poetry: in identity, love, memory, and the passage of time.