Divamensch
Karen, Stephanie, and I saw *Ainadamar* at the Met on Nov 6, 2024.
It's an opera by composer Osvaldo Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang. It was first performed in concert at Tanglewood in 2003, revised for another concert performance in Los Angeles in 2004, and given a fully staged production in Santa Fe in 2005. Karen saw a performance at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2006.
The central character is Margarita Xirgu, an actress who was a muse for playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. Lorca is also a character in the opera, played by a mezzo soprano. The opera opens backstage in a theater in Uruguay, in 1969, as Xirgu is about to perform in Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda. She thinks back to the 1930s, before and during the Spanish Civil War. We see flashbacks of her life with Lorca, leading up to his arrest and murder.
I can see why the piece was performed in concert when it was new, it's rather static, more like an oratorio than an opera. The director and choreographer was Met debutante Deborah Colker, who added a wonderful energy to the piece. The opening image was stunning - - the center of the stage was encircled by a cylinder of what looked to me like silk cords, going from the flies above the stage all the way to the floor. They were a flexible and sensuous scenic element. They served as a "screen" for a projection of a film of a bull at the start of show, firmly placing us in Spain. This silk cord curtain was onstage for much of the show.
This was my first exposure to the music of Golijov and definitely not my last. He has a distinctive voice: he's from a Jewish family that emigrated to Argentina from Romania and Ukraine, and you can hear all of those influences in his music. Stephanie heard echoes (she may have even used the word "thefts") of Gil Evans's arrangements for Miles Davis's *Sketches of Spain.* I don't have a problem with that - - if yer gonna steal, steal from the best!
Soprano Angel Blue played Xirgu. I'd heard her at the Met as Bess in *Porgy and Bess* and as Micaëla in *Carmen.* She impressed me as Bess and less as Micaëla. I went into the show wishing that the Met had given the role to Ailyn Pérez, who knocked me out in *Florencia en el Amazonas* last season, another contemporary opera in Spanish. Well, Blue totally won me over. She sang with a strong feeling for the style but also sang like a straight up opera singer. I imagine this takes a certain know-how and she nailed it.
Mezzo Daniela Mack played Lorca - - her voice was sexy and somewhat mannish, it rolled out of her in a beguiling way. Tenor Alfredo Tejada sang the role of Ruiz Alonso, the fascist who arrests Lorca. This role is written not for an opera singer but for a flamenco singer. Tejada was thrilling, I'd never heard singing like that at the Met.
The piece uses a sub-chorus of women called The Niñas. The Met had eighteen women in this group, all appearing to be Latinas, singing and dancing in an authentic Spanish way that again, was unlike anything I'd heard at the Met.
I loved this piece. I especially loved hearing something so unusual at the stodgy old Met.