New York, October 15 (EFE).- The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, author of the famous poem “Poet in New York”, returned today Tuesday to the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan as the protagonist of the work Ainadamar, made by the Argentine Osvaldo Golijov, which was first published in 2003 and never performed in the Big Apple.
The MET Opera, which performed a work in Spanish last year for the first time with particular success – ‘Florence in the Amazon’ – wanted to do so again with this production in which Lorca is played by woman, the mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack , while the role of Margarita Xirgú, who appears as Lorca’s mentor and protector, the main role of the piece, falls to the black soprano Angel Blue.
The audience that filled the Met Opera hall applauded the two main characters of this special version by the Brazilian Deborah Colker, who is also a choreographer on a stage that is not as exciting as it is solemn, in are the original lighting effects. prop compensation is sometimes reduced to a minimum.
Golijov’s work – with a libretto by David Henry Wang – has the effect of not falling into the political trap: although it is clear that Lorca was murdered by a group of Falangists who hated him “for being a a fagot and a communist”, Lorca appears in the first place as an artist and poet who is committed to freedom.
One of the prayers of this opera lies in the purely musical aspect: flamenco guitars and deep rhythms can be heard as never before in a New York hall, as well as an abundance of instruments that often get control of the pit orchestra. It is added here, above, some of the most ruthless radio harangues delivered by the Falangist Queipo de Llano on Radio Seville, promising violence to his enemies.
The result, although more difficult than classical operas, works very well, thanks above all to the powerful interpretations of Lorca’s characters, but above all to Margarita Xirgú and the Falangist Alfredo Ramón Ruiz Alonso, played with conviction by flamenco singer Alfredo Tejada, who makes his operatic debut here.
The story that the opera finds is not easy to follow for New Yorkers who do not know the Spanish poet: the common thread of the story is the actress Margarita Xirgú, who from her exile in Montevideo remembers the moment she met Lorca, in a bar in Madrid, when he was hosting his play ‘Mariana Pineda’.
The work makes several references to Mariana Pineda as a symbol of the freedom for which Lorca also fought, and that is the most confusing part, because it is not clear to the viewer who the woman is -hero of Granada or why she was executed.
When the war started, in the end he ended his life.
The play, which has three parts but is played without interruption (an hour and a half in total) ends again with old Xirgú back in Montevideo, retired without to return to her home country and pass the baton to Nuria, a successful student, who promises that Lorca’s work will survive as a result of his second Latin American life.
(c) EFE Group
2024-10-16 04:18:00
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