The life and death of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca entered since yesterday Metropolitan Opera House in New York, by the hand of Ainadamarthe only opera by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, for which he won two awards Grammy in 2007.
Composed in 2003, Ainadamar –Fountain of tears in Arabic –, in reference to the place where the poet was murdered by fascists in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and the relationship with the Catalan actress and theater director Margarita Xirgu.
The memoirs of Lorca’s muse and friend focus this opera on three scenes in Spanish in which the evocation of Mariana Pineda, one of the great legacies of the Andalusian writer, a tribute to freedom, permeates the 90 minutes of the work.
But those dreams are soon cut short by the chaos and repression embodied by Ramón Ruiz Alonso, the Falangist who arrested the poet and led to his execution on August 19, 1936.
Golijov, born in La Plata, Argentina 63 years ago, he considers that his work “sounds like it belongs to the MET and that he can sit at the table with the greats.”
Added to this is the production of the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, who understood that this opera can “be danced from beginning to end,” as well as the “geological rhythms of the work,” its “lyrism and rhythmic vitality.”
It is the first opera he has directed Colker, who made the set up for its first presentation in Scotland in 2022.
In it, dance acquires the same prominence and drama as the history of music itself, a mix of styles that combine traditional operatic language with electronic sounds and rhythms such as rumba and flamenco.
This petite Brazilian full of energy has made the protagonists dance like Angel Blue, the soprano african american who plays Margarita
It is basically a story told by women. Even Lorca is played by the mezzo-soprano of Argentine origin Daniela Mack.
“I am completely outside the world of opera,” justifies Colker, who considers himself “a little different” to the traditional directors who do things “within the rules“.
Colker has already been commissioned by the quasi-sesquicentennial New York institution to direct another opera in Spanish, Frida and Diego, scheduled for 2026.
Mack, who played Lorca in 2022recognizes that this work represents “a challenge because there are many elements that are not necessarily present in a more traditional opera.”
In Golijov’s work you have to “deal with the sound effects and time everything and time the dance,” he explained.