The carnival of the animals

Performed and recorded in high quality by the prestigious Valdivia Chamber Orchestra, El Carnaval de los Animales debuts at GAM for the 15 years of La Llave Maestra, a company that invites you to enjoy various disciplines on stage such as dance, theater of objects and dolls, masks, clown and shadow theater, to create an amazing and moving work for all ages.

The famous musical suite created by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns is the protagonist in this staging where the pieces “Dance Macabre” by Saint-Saëns himself and “Claro de Luna” by Claude Debussy are also added, thus completing a musical and visual universe of great beauty and emotional impact.

"We carried out a first period of listening and analyzing each piece of music, rescuing the sensations and suggestions that each one generated in us. In a second instance we began to improvise around each piece using various theatrical techniques. At the end came the assembly process, where we had to fit each movement into the music as choreography, moving from the surprising to the comic, the dramatic and the poetic," says Álvaro Morales, co-director of the company.

The work is an invitation to let yourself be carried away by music and image towards a universe populated by animals created through masks, dolls, objects, shadows, dance, among others. "One challenge was to bring into dialogue the characteristic scenic language of The Master Key with the musical language of the composer and another was to create a work sustained exclusively by the relationship between music and image," adds Morales.

The Carnival of the Animals debuted in March 2024 at the Cervantes Theater in Valdivia and has been presented at the Municipal Theater of Las Condes and Viña del Mar, the Regional Theater in Rancagua, Festival Teatro a Mil and Matucana 100 with public success. It also toured Medellín that same year and in 2025 it won a BancoEstado fund for its circulation in 7 new scenarios.

"Taking into account the seriousness of our current environmental situation, where natural spaces are becoming smaller and human presence is ending up excluding wildlife, we think that putting the focus back on animals and other non-human beings is an urgent need that invites us to re-evaluate the beauty of the animal world and its importance for the balance and life of the planet," concludes the director.

Direction: Edurne Rankin and Álvaro Morales | Company: The Master Key | Cast: Edurne Rankin, Marcela Burgos, Magdalena Lecaros, Diego Acuña and Juan Pablo Neira | Choreographic advice: Esdras Hernández | Comprehensive design: Edurne Rankin and Álvaro Morales | Scenographic realization: Gabriela González, Antonia Arriaza, Andrés Moreno, La Llave Maestra | Mask making: Gabriela González, Antonia Arriaza, Nicole Salgado | Costume creation: Sergio Aravena | Original idea and graphic design: Álvaro Morales | Graphic design: Liza Retamal | Musical performance Valdivia Chamber Orchestra | Musical Direction Rodolfo Fischer | Music recording and editing Loreta Nass

Project financed by the National Fund for the Promotion and Development of the Performing Arts, call 2023, Municipal Corporation of Valdivia | Coproduces: Espacio Czechoslovakia, The Master Key, Valdivia Chamber Orchestra