We celebrate them after death when we might have celebrated them while they lived.
En las horas que siguieron a la muerte del Papa Francisco, un joven compositor porteño sintió algo más que duelo: sintió la pregunta que atraviesa toda vida pública, toda figura que desafía su época. ¿Por qué esperamos a que alguien se vaya para reconocer lo que fue? 'Francisco, el Papa del Fin del Mundo' nace de esa incomodidad, y se estrena en el Teatro Picadero de Buenos Aires como un acto de reparación simbólica: celebrar en vida lo que la muerte suele revelar demasiado tarde.
- La muerte del Papa el 17 de abril llegó como una ruptura imposible: Crespo lo había visto en televisión horas antes, y la noticia convirtió esa imagen en fantasma.
- El duelo colectivo disparó una pregunta más urgente que el dolor: ¿por qué las sociedades esperan la ausencia para valorar a quienes las transformaron?
- En menos de un año, Crespo, el libretista Leo Schmit y la directora Luján Zalazar construyeron una obra que recorre toda la vida de Bergoglio, desde su nacimiento en 1936 hasta su muerte, sin convertirlo en ícono sino en hombre.
- El tango y la sinfonía contemporánea se entrelazan en una partitura que refleja la apertura que el propio Francisco encarnó: una vida en los márgenes, contra el poder, con los brazos abiertos incluso a quienes lo atacaron.
- La obra se presenta como función única en el Teatro Picadero, con quince músicos en vivo, como si la urgencia del mensaje no admitiera dilación ni gira prolongada.
Nicolás Crespo estaba mirando un grupo de WhatsApp el 17 de abril cuando llegó el mensaje: el Papa había muerto. Horas antes lo había visto en televisión, vivo. Esa grieta entre lo que había visto y lo que le decían se convirtió en la semilla de un musical.
Lo que siguió al duelo no fue solo tristeza, sino una pregunta: ¿por qué celebramos a las personas que importan solo después de que se van? Esa reflexión se transformó en 'Francisco, el Papa del Fin del Mundo', una obra sinfónica que se estrena en el Teatro Picadero de Buenos Aires con una orquesta de quince músicos en vivo. La música es de Crespo, el libro y las letras de Leo Schmit, y la dirección de Luján Zalazar.
La obra recorre la vida entera de Jorge Mario Bergoglio desde 1936, sin tratarlo como ícono religioso sino como un hombre formado por fuerzas históricas concretas. Sus padres eran inmigrantes italianos que huían de la Primera Guerra Mundial, y ese origen —una familia ya marcada por la búsqueda de paz— es el punto de partida de todo lo que sigue. La obertura, 'Buenos Aires Arde', sitúa al espectador en la ciudad de los años treinta: fracturada, convulsionada, a la vez familiar y ajena.
El Francisco que retrata la obra fue perseguido por gobiernos democráticos y autoritarios, tomó posiciones incómodas, desafió al poder en lugar de acomodarse a él. Y sin embargo, cuando los presidentes le decían cosas terribles, él los recibía con un abrazo. El tango recorre la partitura como hilo conductor, y el género del musical —con su apertura formal— refleja la misma apertura que Crespo ve en la vida de Bergoglio: una existencia entregada a los márgenes, vivida con austeridad, convencida de que los pobres son los protagonistas de la historia.
El proyecto nació en un retiro espiritual en Córdoba, donde Zalazar y Crespo decidieron que ninguna otra figura reunía lo que buscaban. La documentación acumulada y el duelo colectivo que siguió a la muerte del Papa terminaron de definir el rumbo. El verdadero tema de Crespo, sin embargo, es más simple y más urgente: la necesidad de ver a las personas que nos importan mientras todavía están aquí.
Nicolás Crespo was scrolling through a WhatsApp group on April 17 when he saw the message: classes were suspended. The Pope was dead. He had watched Francis on television just hours before, so the news felt impossible, a rupture between what he'd seen and what he was being told. That moment of dissonance—the gap between a living person and the sudden fact of their absence—became the seed for a musical.
Crespo, a young composer, had spent the previous summer tracking Pope Francis's declining health obsessively, checking the news almost daily. When the end came, it triggered something beyond grief. It was a question about how we honor the people who matter to us. We wait until they're gone, Crespo thought. We celebrate them after death when we might have celebrated them while they lived. That reflection became the driving force behind "Francisco, el Papa del Fin del Mundo," a symphonic musical that opens tomorrow night at Teatro Picadero in Buenos Aires.
The production is a single performance—March 24 at 8 p.m.—featuring a fifteen-piece live orchestra. Crespo composed the music; Leo Schmit wrote the book and lyrics; Luján Zalazar directs. Together they've constructed a narrative arc spanning Jorge Mario Bergoglio's entire life from his 1936 birth through his death, treating him not as a religious icon but as a man shaped by specific historical forces. His parents were Italian immigrants fleeing the First World War, and that origin story matters to how Crespo frames the work. A child born into a family running from one catastrophe, raised in a household already shaped by the search for peace—that becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
The musical opens with an overture called "Buenos Aires Arde," which places the audience in 1930s Buenos Aires, the city of Crespo's own childhood. It's a Buenos Aires caught between wars, politically fractured, full of the kind of social turbulence that would define the century ahead. From there, the work traces Bergoglio's journey through a life marked by idealism and its costs. He was persecuted by both democratic and authoritarian governments in Argentina. He took positions that were politically inconvenient, that challenged power rather than accommodating it. Yet Crespo emphasizes a particular quality: even when presidents said terrible things about him, Francis received them with an embrace. The work portrays a man who believed in forgiveness, who believed the poor were the protagonists of history, who lived austerely and committed himself to the margins.
Tango runs through the score. So do the varied rhythms and forms that musical theater allows—the genre itself becomes a kind of formal openness that mirrors the openness Crespo sees in Francis's approach to life. The project came together quickly, less than a year from conception to premiere, driven partly by a conversation between Zalazar and Crespo during a spiritual retreat in Córdoba. They had initially considered focusing on another figure, but the documentation they gathered on Francis, combined with the collective moment of mourning that followed his death, redirected the work.
The cast includes Alito Gallo Gosende, Flor Barisone, Chiara Rodó, and others, with Crespo conducting. For this premiere, the production is presenting the central songs of the larger work, blending theatrical language with contemporary symphonic elements. It's not a hagiography. It's an attempt to reckon with a life lived in public, shaped by history, marked by conviction and consequence. Crespo's real subject, though, is simpler and more urgent: the need to see the people who matter to us while they're still here, to value them before absence makes that valuation inevitable.
Notable Quotes
He always was a friend, always had faith and forgiveness. Even when some presidents said terrible things about him, he received them with an embrace.— Nicolás Crespo, composer, describing Pope Francis's approach to those who opposed him
We always have very great idols at a global level and they are not always valued in Argentina, or at least not while they are alive—perhaps only after they die are they valued much more.— Nicolás Crespo, on the impulse behind the musical
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
What made you decide to make this a musical rather than a straight play or documentary?
A musical lets you hold contradictions. You can have someone singing about faith and also about political persecution in the same moment. The form itself—the music, the rhythm, the tango—it creates space for complexity that dialogue alone might flatten.
You mention that Francis was persecuted in both democracies and dictatorships. That's a specific kind of threat.
Yes. He wasn't safe under either system because he wouldn't align himself with power. He kept choosing the poor, kept choosing forgiveness even when it was politically costly. That consistency across different regimes—that's what struck me.
The overture is called "Buenos Aires Arde." Why does the city burn?
Because it was burning. The 1930s were a moment of real social fracture in Argentina. Wars in Europe, economic instability, political violence at home. That's the world he was born into. You can't understand him without understanding that heat.
You learned about his death through a WhatsApp message. That's very contemporary.
It is. And it made me think about how we experience loss now—fragmented, mediated, sudden. But it also made me realize we do this thing where we only truly see people after they're gone. I wanted to reverse that, to see him while he was alive.
The cast is performing the central songs, not the full work. Why that choice?
This is a premiere, a moment to test the material and let people hear what we've built. The full musical will come later, but right now we wanted to give the audience the heart of it—the songs that carry the story forward.
What do you hope someone leaves with after hearing this?
A sense that a life can be lived with conviction even when it costs you. And maybe a question about who we're not celebrating enough while they're still here.