Etudes / Estebanico

An operatic spectacle for singers, dancers and electronic media.

Spanning millennia, centered on Estebanico as an alternate American “founding father” myth. Created and composed by Paul Pinto.

Performed by Paul Pinto and Etudes / Estebanico ensemble members.

Inspired by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's surrealist 16th century odyssey and narrative across ‘America’, this multimedia opera refocuses American mythology and national identity on Estebanico, an African sailor, Spanish captive, faith healer, and explorer. 

Estebanico, originally Mustafa Azemmouri, shared the role of captive and conquistador with his three white Spaniard companions when they shipwrecked in La Florida in 1528, becoming totems, legends, pirates, preachers, and problems of American history, identity and democracy.

Much of what we know about Estebanico comes from one of his traveling companions, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1542, Cabeza de Vaca published his version of events in two of his journeys to the Americas.  Thanks to the generosity of Bill and Sally Wittliff, the Wittliff Collection holds a very rare 1555 edition of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La relación y comentarios del gouernador Aluar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias. 

In the summer of 2025, Paul Pinto did some research on Estebanico / Mustafa Azemmouri at the Wittliff with curators and local faculty. Part of what is being presented in Etudes / Estebanico follows from his time with the collection and is part of what is broadly called a living archive.  In this case, it involves using operatic composition and an expansive music history as a form of engagement with the archival and mythical past. 

Etudes / Estebanico is part of a renewed interest in the possibilities provided by the mythology and "facts" surrounding founding figures before the 21st  century, including Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Rhiannon Giddens’ Omar, Shaina Taub’s Suffs, Michael Friedman’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz’ El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey and Paul Pinto’s Beowulf and Thomas Paine in Violence.

This performance will include a talk-back with Paul Pinto and Carrie Fountain and the Texas State community on the process and performance of Etudes / Estebanico. Insights to be incorporated into future work.  

The talk back is part of a longer tradition of incorporating audience participation into subsequent performances, an experiment that includes Joe Papp’s Public Theater, Ernesto Buenaventura’s Teatro Experimental de Cali, Commedia dell’ Arte and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

Sponsors: The Center for the Study of the Southwest, Department of Theatre and Dance, The Wittliff Collections, Department of History, and The College of Liberal Arts

Paul Pinto, creator and composer, hailed by the Wire as  “one of the most exceptional composers in new music, with a sensibility that can handle deadly seriousness and wicked humor”, Paul Pinto creates and preforms multi-disciplinary opera-theater and installation.  Some highlights include Patriots with Jeff Young,  Whiteness with Kameron Neal, an ongoing re-arrangement of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives, and his first opera Thomas Paine in Violence. He's a founding member of the Collectives Thingy and Varispeed and has performed internationally and on and off Broadway. 

I often spend months dabbling in self-portraiture that sparks intimate dialogue about identity. As an interdisciplinary performer and wordy operatic sermonizer, I'm a curious and exploratory artist obsessed with choral armies, floating heads, verbal gymnastics, immersive and durational encounters, subtly sexual reverb, strong (maybe manipulative) gestures, hyperbole and biting self-reflection. Inspirations and influences including borderlands, people who work in bodegas, the [great] state of New Jersey, Boyz II Men, Raven Chacon, The Ink Spots, Outer Space, immigrants, and the American public school system.