‘Song Of The Hands’ From María Valverde & Gustavo Dudamel Will Tell The Story Of Deaf Artists Preparing For A Unique Performance Of Beethoven’s Fidelio
EXCLUSIVE: Spanish actress and director María Valverde and superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel are making El Canto de las Manos (Song Of The Hands). The feature documentary will tell the remarkable story behind a deaf choir’s unique production of the Beethoven opera Fidelio.
Valverde will direct the doc and DJ Kurs, Artistic Director of the acclaimed Deaf West Theatre company, is an exec producer. It is being produced by Valverde and Dudamel’s Quinchoncho label, alongside Forty Entertainment.
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Dudamel is the music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Long fascinated by Beethoven’s Deafness, he staged a first-of-its-kind production of Fidelio at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2022. He brought together the LA Phil orchestra, opera singer-soloists, a vocal choir, signing actors from the Deaf West Theatre company and the Venezuelan Deaf choir, Coro de Manos Blancas (White Hands Choir), for an iconic performance. The LA Phil just wrapped a European Tour reprising the production, which visited Barcelona, London and Paris.
El Canto de las Manos (which has the English title Song Of The Hands) takes place after the 2022 production and before the recent tour. It follows members of Coro de Manos Blancas who take on the challenge of preparing for, and starring in, a production of Fidelio in Caracas in their native Venezuela.
Dudamel told Deadline about the film and the story behind it. “This documentary reflects the depth and significance of a unique project, the interpretation of Beethoven’s only opera in sign language,” he said. “It is a journey of transformation, empathy, difficulties, challenges, love and encounters. The vindication of an isolated and undervalued community through the most sublime human expression, art.”
The documentary will be a verité style film that focuses on three members of the choir, Jennifer González, Gabriel Linarez and José Gabriel Abarca, following their daily lives as they take on the challenge of learning to perform at a world class level.
For Valverde, the project marks a move into directing. “This documentary is an opportunity to get the hearing audience closer to a new and important way of understanding the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community for whom, also, music has a transforming power,” she said. “It is a meeting point between two communities in which the members of El Coro de Manos Blancas become leaders.”
The 90-minute film was shot in Venezuela and LA and is expected to have a festival run. “The film is a celebration of the transformative power of performance, and the magic that happens when Deaf talents are offered the chance to perform on the world stage,” DJ Kurs told Deadline. “This documentary captures their resilience, creativity, and the profound possibilities that sign language and Deaf culture offer to the world.”
Cristina Oliva and Martí Font produce for Barcelona-based Forty. The doc is made in association with The DeNovo Initiative, which is a major financier of the project, as well as The Breathe Project.
Former AMC and Blumhouse executive Marci Wiseman is an exec producer for DeNovo. Other EPs are Paula P. Manzanedo, Ana Pinós, Dawn Bonder, MJ Peckham and Daniel J. Chalfen.
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