Gustavo Dudamel: “As Beethoven became deaf, he developed his own musical language that remains groundbreaking.”

Fidelio is the only opera composed by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, written during his struggle with deafness. In April 2022, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, alongside the Deaf West Theatre company, premiered a new production of this work, directed by Gustavo Dudamel. The Manos Blancas choir, an ensemble of musicians with hearing disabilities from Venezuela, participated in this production. It was the first time this opera was performed in sign language. Witnessing this led the Venezuelan conductor to reflect and experience an epiphany, realizing these young people were the lights of the project and questioning: what if they became the faces of Fidelio? This questioning sparked the creation of The Song of Hands by director María Valverde, a documentary presented at the 40th edition of the International Film Festival in Guadalajara.

The Song of Hands explores deafness through music, following Jennifer, Gabriel, and José, three deaf musicians from Venezuela, as they tackle the challenge of bringing Beethoven’s Fidelio to the stage for the first time in sign language.

Dudamel, 44, born in Barquisimeto, states that the idea for the documentary began to evolve while he was at Princeton University. There, he had the opportunity to see one of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, of which there are only two or three in the world—according to the musician—and he encountered “a tremendous intensity.”

“We know Beethoven through the sound world, the music edited in beautiful handwriting, but when you see his natural strokes of what he wrote, I describe it as a beautiful torment. I imagine all those searches, as he would write, erase, and change. It was, I believe, a glimpse into the interior world that deafness took him to, very intimate to him, when he was completely alone, and through which we sought to understand the same condition of these young people,” explains the Venezuelan composer from the Cineteca in Guadalajara.

In 2020, the 250th anniversary of the German composer’s birth was commemorated. The music director and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic felt the need to explore beyond tradition to celebrate it. The plot of Fidelio has parallels with the story of these young performers and the author himself. “It’s a story about love, freedom, and the fight against adversity—a reflection of his life. […] I see them and think about how profound it is to feel music through sign language. It would mean being able to understand Beethoven in his true dimension,” asserts the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in a segment of the film.

María Valverde, the Madrid actress who built her career with Three Meters Above Heaven in her early 20s, returns at 38 to make her directorial debut. She shares, through a video call, that her greatest challenge was being faithful and honest to the story she was telling. “Especially for Jennifer, Gabriel, and José Gabriel to see me as someone they could trust. Nobody invited me to make this film. I did it from the heart and from my need to understand the deaf community. My greatest challenge was to have them feel identified with the story I was telling,” she explains.

Valverde recounts that filming involved a lot of observation, especially since they couldn’t afford to waste time, as they were working alongside the staging of the opera, with situations occurring and little time for planning. The director describes it as a “quite wild” process since they had to be recording “in the heat of the moment.”

“For me as a director, it was necessary to understand as a hearing person that I sometimes had to stop learning what I already knew and let myself be absorbed by what they were teaching me. In the end, it has been a learning experience that, as a hearing person, we need to pause and think and ask what we are doing wrong to exclude them from certain essential experiences,” Valverde adds.

Multidimensionality of Beethoven

The Manos Blancas Choir is a special education program within the National Network of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, known as The System. This program was created in 1995 by José Antonio Abreu to integrate children, youth, and adults with functional diversity or physical and cognitive disabilities into daily life and artistic activities, using music as a tool for development and inclusion. This program has fostered important musicians, including conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

The Venezuelan musician explains that materializing this project involved years of work, trial, and error. Initially, he states, they faced a communication and cultural barrier that could lead one to think we are separate. However, the conductor says it is much simpler than it seems, with music as a bridge. It may sound utopian, he says, but it only requires taking on the challenge. “Music is not just sound. It is vibration; it has many spectrums. Many dimensions through which you can feel it. Music is not just heard; it is felt, and that breaks barriers. It breaks down any wall that we might have in principle and concerning cultural values,” he adds.

Valverde, who is also Dudamel’s partner, admits, laughing, that directing a conductor has its complexities. However, she praises his artistry and the way he expresses himself to achieve something “so beautiful and inspiring.” “For me, it was very important that he be this creator of dreams and that he help the protagonists develop artistically. It was a beautiful exercise for both of us as directors to unite in such a personal and necessary project as The Song of Hands,” the director clarifies.

To Dudamel, who considers himself an aficionado of Beethoven, his work, and creative process, this project helped him understand the multidimensionality of music more deeply. “You can see it through these youngsters who truly teach you to feel music. Beethoven gave us that, because as he began to go deaf, he created his own musical language that transcended and remains avant-garde today. In the last music he wrote, when he was completely deaf, you see a revealing world he offers us through that condition. This hope and motivation these youngsters give us through music is something powerfully transformative,” the musician concludes.