Osvaldo Golijov's strangely strange “Ainadamar” has reached Los Angeles. The Opera, one of the most rewarding of this century, depicts the political execution of 1936 of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish civil war during the last minutes of the life of actress Margarita Xyrgu. She dies as she is about to go on stage in the play by Lorca “Mariana Pineda”, about the heroine of a previous Spanish revolution.
The last minute of Margarita on earth lasts 90 minutes filled with flamenco in the opera in an act of Golijov. Lorca's life – her spirit, her loves and her lust – is revealed in flashbacks, which the Opera takes the best party from a flamboyant production and balance sheet. But it is the pain of Margarita that we feel, his death that we live and her the life we mourn.
Lorca's death therefore becomes a borrowed experience. It is a history of history. Margarita's last act is to transmit this spirit to a young actress, Nuria and in the process, for us. The saddest of operas, “Ainadamar” is not a tragic opera, not an opera of open and firm endings, but one of the ends open.
Life continues. But what comes next?
A production with a length of unless film can feel roughly for a modern audience. “Ainadamar” satisfied in itself but nevertheless suggests that there is something more to consider. Margarita's strength asks to stay in our conscience longer.
She stayed a little longer. After the Sunday morning of “Ainadamar” at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the master of Los Angeles Choir gave the first American of the new “Dream Requiem” by Rufus Wainwright, who turned out to be an ideal companion to “Ainadamar”.
Although Golijov is an Argentinian introspective composer who comes out of the world of classical music, his works are imbued with folk songs and Dance of Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Wainwright is an introspective pop star with a renowned folk song pedigree who is also an opera passionate and a composer. At the conference before the concert on Sunday, Wainwright said that Verdi's Requiem at the age of 13 had changed his life.
“Ainadamar” and the 80 -minute “Dream Requiem” have poets in their hearts. Just as Lorca embodies Lorca, the recitations of Wainwright wire of “Darkness” of Lord Byron of 1816, throughout a partition, otherwise based on the traditional text of Latin Requiem.
Each work is his own fountain of tears. Ainadamar is, in fact, the Arab term for the fountain of tears, the Granada site where Lorca was shot down by a shooting team, probably for political reasons as well as to be gay. In “Dream Requiem”, we cry on the environment. Byron wrote “Darkness” in response to the eruption of the 1815 Tambora volcano in Indonesia, which darkened the sun in the world for more than a year.
The so-called “year without summer” of 1816 was also a period of revolt in Spain. Fifteen years later, Spanish liberalist Mariana Pineda was executed. The three parts of “Ainadamar” begin with the refrain which sings a walk.
The magnificent performance of “Dream Requiem” – led by Grant Gershon and with the Master choir, the impressive choir of the children of Los Angeles, an excellent large orchestra, the spectacular soprano livpath and a Jane Funda vehement as a narrator of seizure – has proven a necessary complement to a more problematic performance of “Ainadamar”.
The opera has deep roots in Los Angeles. A philharmonic co-commission of Los Angeles, the provisional theatrical first version “Ainadamar” has survived in its cases of musical shine. Under the supervision of Peter Sellars, Golijov and the David Henry Hwang booklet completely rewritten “Ainadamar” for Santa Fe Opera in a moving production sublimely with gloriously grafitti-fiedd-fied sets.
A musically promising but uncertain opera instantly turned into a Essential classic For a new century. The first Local of Long Beach Opera of this version was followed by a powerful concert performance at the Ojai Music Festival with the Atlanta Symphony led by Robert Spano and with Dawn Upshaw, the forces that made the famous recording of the work.
The La Opera Revival is a new production that has toured the Scottish Opera, the Welsh National Opera, the Detroit Opera and, last fall, the New York Metropolitan Opera. It is the work of the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, better known to create the Sun circus “OVO” tour program.
Colker deals with “Ainadamar” as another drama show with dazzling images. Flamenco's dance, choreographed by Antonio Najarro, is exciting and the dance formidable. Tal Rosner's resplendent video projections appear on pearl curtains that surround a circular space in the middle of the scene where most of the action takes place.
Ana Maria Martinez as Margarita Xirgu, on the left, and Daniela Mack in the role of Federico Garcia Lorca in “Ainadamar”.
(Cory Weaver / La Opera)
But all of this avoids the challenges of a magical realism where questions on the aim of poetry, theater, political resistance, life and inheritance are only responsible. Golijov's score is also unanswered, full of electronic effects, where the sound of gunshots beat complex dance rhythms.
The three main characters are played by women: Margarita (Ana María Martínez), Nuria (Vanessa Becerra) and Lorca (Daniela Mack). All are credible and their trio at the end is exquisite, even if with amplification and the dramatic limits of production, they have a limited presence. Alfredo Tejada made his surprising debut as a ramón Ruiz Alonso frightful, who stops Lorca. The company's conductor of the company, Lina González-Granados, thrives on the rhythms of dance with force.
The wonderful lyric moments of the opera or a feeling of inventive and inventive inventive musical sources of Golijov. When the company compensates for this, however, is in its series of informative podcasts and program notes adding the lost context in the staging.
Like Golijov (and like Leonard Bernstein and Mahler), Wainwright is an author-songwriter, and he had the advantage of Gershon transmitting lush lyricism in “Dream Requiem”, a work which, in his heart, is also operational. He returned to Verdi and the end of the 19th century but with his own unexpected turns.
Like Golijov in “Ainadamar”, Wainwright begins very quietly and slows down its musical architecture from a range of materials and colors. It goes for great effects, many percussion, huge culminating points and sweet melodies that you can never, if you do, have enough.
Wainwright hits the “Dies Irae” (day of anger) as almost all composers do in the Requiem masses, but it can be retained where others tend to be noisy and enthusiastic (Sanctus) and Visa Versa. He shows no mercy on the Solo Soprano part, but Redpath surprised when she set the heights on the scale.
Jane Fonda recites byron's “Darkness” in the “Dream Requiem” by Rufus Wainwright at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday.
(Jamie Pham / Los Angeles Master Choral)
In the end, Wainwright created a bardo of the last days, the spiritual journey that follows death. The interruptions of the Byron poem brought chills in the fascinating reading of Fonda, because the text follows the rupture of humanity in the aftermath of the environmental disaster. She made Requiem warning for all of us.
Once, this is not enough for “Dream Requiem”. A recording of the first in Paris last year was published, but it does not hold a candle with live performance from the Master choir in Disney. “Dream Requiem” will be presented by several co-communkers in Europe, as well as for the Royal Ballet in London.
Who will dare to dream big and be the first to stage “Dream Requiem” as a double invoice with “Ainadamar”?
