Nicolás Lell Benavides’ ‘Tres Minutos’ (Paul Bodine)

By Paul Bodine

Benavides’ powerful, dramatically savvy score and Marella Martin Koch’s searing libretto transfigured what could have been a polemical exercise into a radically moving experience. From its opening doom chord to its skillful writing for clarinet, strings, and piano, Benavides’ score strikes a masterful balance between economical restraint and emotive force. Only rarely letting the subject’s political dimension intrude, Koch deploys humor (‘You look the same – terrible’), family back stories, suspense, and plain old good writing (‘a life that looks but no longer feels like yours’) to create a three-dimensional portrait of unconquerable sibling love.

House lights up, a standing ovation and several audience members’ teary eyes confirmed ‘Tres Minutos’ hit its mark.