#ainadamar

Background

Assuming not everyone reading this knows much about this opera, a quick recap. Divided into three "images," the plot begins in Uruguay in 1969, where Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu, who has been living in exile from Spain for the past 30+ years, is preparing to go onstage in the title role of Federico García Lorca's play Mariana Pineda. As she waits for her entrance, Margarita begins to reminisce to her protégée Nuria about her close friendship and artistic collaborations with Lorca, who was assassinated by the Falange during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The rest of the plot toggles back and forth between the wings of this theater in Uruguay in 1969, and Margarita's memories of Spain in the 1920s and 1930s as the country descended into chaos and fascism—particularly, her first meeting with Lorca, her futile attempts to convince him to flee to Cuba with her, and her imaginings of his execution.

I had to explain the entire plot structure and all the characters post-show to some ladies in the lobby who were there purely because they had seen something about the opera in the New York Times and spontaneously bought tickets without knowing a thing about it (god, I envy New Yorkers). They were startled when I informed them that our main character was actually a real person, so, as evidence, voilà, a sign from the plaza commemorating her in Barcelona (hence the Catalan signage and name spelling), because of course I had to take a little pilgrimage to this spot and fangirl a bit, when I was there several years ago.

It's probably also useful to explain here a little bit about Lorca's play Mariana Pineda. The plot of the play concerns an historical figure who, in 1831, was arrested for having a revolutionary flag in her home, and then was executed for refusing to tell the authorities the whereabouts of her revolutionary lover and his associates. Mariana Pineda has since become a folk hero in her hometown of Granada, which is where Lorca grew up (this figures in the plot of the opera). Lorca wrote the title role of his play for Xirgu, and it premiered in 1925, before the start of the Spanish Civil War. The opening lines of the play—"¡Ay! qué día tan triste en Granada, / que a la piedra hacía llorar, / al ver que Marianita se muere / en el cadalso por no declarar" ("Oh, what a sad day in Granada, / that made the stones cry / to see Marianita die / on the scaffold for not speaking")—are repeated throughout Golijov's opera, in the "Baladas" that begin each of the three images.

I also should note that there's a full recording of this opera on YouTube! I jokingly refer to this as the "Original Cast Recording," so if I refer to the "OCR" in the below, that's what this is. Give it a listen, if you're not already familiar with this opera, since the music alone is truly extraordinary. And, given that I'm about to give a sort of blow-by-blow of the staging, you can follow along with the tracks provided, should you so choose.

First Image: Mariana

The show started without the conductor taking a bow or even being acknowledged, which I kind of loved; the audience was thrown straight into that very ominous low drone that begins the opera.  Lights up on a cylindrical curtain made of sort of sheer strips hanging downwards—easy for people to move through, but solid enough to capture projected images and text.  Since it was sheer, the lights went up on a dancer standing there on a slowly rotating stage, with footage of a bull (very Spanish) projected lightly onto the curtain.  Once the quicker flamenco beats within the horse's galloping began in the prelude, though, said dancer began striking these amazingly dynamic poses as the lights flashed down on him, before just outright dancing.  Truly, the lighting designer for this production deserves every award imaginable.  As do the choreographers, because my GOD, the dancing was incredible, I hope Deborah Colker wins all of the relevant awards for this work of genius.  At the very start of the first Balada, the "Niñas" (the flamenco back-up chorus) turned up in these fabulous earth-toned peasant dresses and began doing this very weighty step that involved their entire bodies—I'm sorry I don't know more about dance and can't describe this more accurately—before they began the first chorus.  It was just so raw and visceral, and I loved every second of it. (Oh, and it looks like the Met has uploaded a clip of this beginning sequence, so definitely check that out, if this sounds at all appealing!)

Photo credit: Metropolitan Opera.

This brings me to Margarita Xirgu's first entrance (clip here), and oh my god, Angel Blue was SO FANTASTIC.  The woman has insane amounts of stage presence, and she was much taller than both of her co-stars, which only added to the effect.  (She also had four separate dresses—black, white, white with red flowers that looked like huge bloodstains, and finally all red—which is an impressive number of costume changes for an 80-minute opera!)  I'm so used to hearing Dawn Upshaw sing this role on the Ainadamar OCR that it was interesting to hear someone with a much heavier voice type sing the role, but Angel Blue really knocked it out of the park, in so many ways.

Photo credit: Metropolitan Opera.

I'll briefly note that one of the few things I didn't totally love about this production was the overuse of projections, which I feel is common in operatic productions these days.  At times, projections were used wonderfully in this show—like the bull at the very beginning in the moments leading into that solo flamenco dancer in the dramatic lighting, or later on where subtle drips of water laced down the central curtain to represent Ainadamar (the "Fountain of Tears").  But throughout Margarita's first big aria, "Mariana, tus ojos" (clip here), we had Angel Blue doing her thing outside the central curtain, plus a chorus of backup singers/dancers in the background behind the central curtain, plus giant projections of Angel Blue's face onto the central curtain, and that was just... so unnecessary?  I mean, this is a very small gripe, in the grand scheme of what a freaking fantastic production this was, on the whole.  But I felt it should be mentioned, especially since it was the second opera I'd seen within a week that used unnecessary and distracting projections of people's faces in the background where it didn't add anything narratively.

Also, a giant shoutout to Elena Villalón, who sang Nuria, Margarita's student.  Her voice sounded fantastic, and her dancing was good enough in the first Balada that I thought she was one of the dancers in the production, not one of the three vocal leads!  Plus, her role got super epic towards the very end of the show, but more on that in a bit...

Bar Albor: Margarita and Federico's friend meetcute. Photo credit: Metropolitan Opera.

Anyway, intro to Lorca!  The Bar Albor scene was super fun—people dancing on tables, the guitarist hanging out on a table and flirting with Angel Blue, Lorca entering from the back of the central curtain in a dapper suit.  Daniela Mack was totally fabulous in this most excellent trouser role, and she looked weirdly like Lorca, given how glamorous she looks in her program headshot and such.  Fabulous vibes, all around.

But THEN, things transitioned into "Desde mi ventana," which is one of those arias that I never really loved from the soundtrack alone, but which was possibly the most magical moment of the entire show for me.  In this aria, Lorca sings about how he wrote his play Mariana Pineda not as a political statement, but because when he was 9 years old, he had fallen in love with the statue of her that he could see from his childhood window in Granada. Mack was positioned outside the central curtain, and when the lights went up inside of the curtain, there were four dancers standing on pillars to represent the statue itself, not moving their legs or feet, but moving their arms in this very beautiful, fluid, flamenco-inspired coordinated dance.  They were wearing these white, toga-like wraps, and when they took those off mid-aria, they began using those wraps like mantones (shawls) in flamenco.  The lights went down at one point, and when they went back up, the statue dancers actually were using very heavily fringed shawls that looked like they might have been made of something thicker, like leather.  All in all, it was one of the most visually impactful moments of the entire show, and that image lives in my head whenever I listen to this aria now.

"Desde mi ventana." Photo credit: Bachtrack.

As mentioned, I've listened to the OCR of this opera too many times, so it caught me off my guard when Alfredo Tejada, the cante jondo singer playing Ramón Ruiz Alonso (the Falange officer who called for Lorca's arrest), sang his first entrance in "Muerte a Caballo," and it was slightly different from what I was used to.  It makes total sense that those interludes would be semi-improvisational, in the style of actual cante jondo (and plenty of opera singing, for that matter), but it still took a minute for my brain to adjust, even during such a bloodcurdling moment.

Second Image: Federico

By the time the lights went back up in the central curtain during the second Balada, all of the tables and chairs had been tipped over into what felt more like a Les Misérables-inspired barricade than anything else.  The Niñas re-entered in red jumpsuits with these giant staffs that they pounded on the ground as they sang, which was incredibly impactful, and again, totally unexpected.  The words of the recorded Falange broadcasts that appear at the end of this Balada were projected in Spanish onto the central curtain as they played, with the words "Viva la muerte" flashing at the end, which I thought was very effective.  Angel Blue sang a wonderfully pained "Quiero arrancarme los ojos" from atop the pseudo-barricade, but came back down to the ground when she slipped back into her memories for "A la Habana" (clip here), which was just delightful and involved both Margarita and Federico dancing with these four sinuous male dancers—everyone just looked like they were having so much fun, and it really made it all the more painful to realize that Lorca passed up living in exile in Cuba like this, for the sake of staying in Spain and defending his principles.

"A la Habana." Photo credit: Bachtrack.

I was very surprised when the exchange between Margarita and Federico at the end of "A la Habana" faded into silence, because in the OCR, things slide from there straight into my favorite number of the entire show.  In that stillness, though, the Niñas began rhythmically tapping their legs with folded fans, and handed fans to both Angel Blue and Daniela Mack.  And I realized what was about to happen just before it happened, and was SO EXCITED, because "Quiero cantar entre los explosiones" then became an entire number involving the entire ensemble dramatically snapping their fans open as part of the choreography that everyone (including the leads!) was doing.  At one point, the ensemble also held their half-opened fans upside-down and sort of "pumped" them, so they gave the impression of a throbbing heart.  It was all just so visually striking, and it really conveyed the dynamism of the beliefs that were keeping Lorca in Spain, even as the dangers around him increased.  (A clip is available here, although it's from later in the piece and doesn't include any of the cool fan-snapping, alas.) They brought the projected words back for all of the Falange broadcasts in the middle of this section, too, and it's truly horrifying to think that this was the sort of thing that was actually put out as propaganda during the Spanish Civil War (rough translation: "You are authorized to kill [the Republicans] like dogs, and you will be free from all responsibility; we will exterminate the seed of the revolution in the wombs of the mothers," that sort of thing).

Fan-snapping! Photo credit: The Dance Enthusiast.

When Ruiz Alonso reappeared for his second big moment, he was actually standing on top of a cart that someone wheeled slowly from one side of the stage, around the front, to the other side of the stage, all as he sang; you could see him unclip himself from the wire they had him rigged to, when he reached his final destination (clip here).  (I actually loved that, although this production had a revolving stage at its disposal, so many moments like this one were carried out using practical effects.)  I don't know this libretto as well as I could, and Ruiz Alonso's bits are so melismatic that I've never really been able to understand what's being said anyway, so it was jarring and really powerful to be reminded of what this character was saying about Lorca, throughout especially the "Arresto" scene—calling him slurs related to his sexual orientation, accusing him of being a Russian agent, etc.  It was much harsher than what I remembered from reading the libretto from a CD insert, once upon a time, but it really did up the stakes a whole lot for the context in which this opera takes place.

As mentioned, projections were used really effectively during the "Fuente de las lágrimas" scene.  Projected water droplets dripped down the central curtain, which aligned with the recorded sound effect used in the opera; meanwhile, the Niñas stepped forwards and backwards through the central curtain and interweaving between each other, as Margarita sang in front of the center of the curtain, which gave everything a very dreamlike and haunting atmosphere.  When the lights went back up inside the central curtain, it was on four figures standing on four tables radiating outwards from the center of the stage; facing front was the bass playing Javier José Tripaldi, the officer who oversaw Lorca's execution; facing back was Lorca; and on the sides were the two figures with whom Lorca was executed (a bullfighter and a teacher).  After Tripaldi had sung his lines, all four lay down on their stomachs on their respective tables, and other cast members slowly pushed the tables 180º around that center point until Lorca's table was front and center, all while a bare lightbulb slowly rose from the point around which the tables were being moved.

Once the tables stopped moving, Lorca turned to face the audience to sing the "Confesión" scene, which I'd also never really found that riveting from the soundtrack alone, but it is HEARTBREAKING in context.  Lorca's text begins with a defiant "Father, forgive me, although I don't know what I've done," but from listening alone, I'd never noticed that the text shifts from "Padre" to "Madre," so that by the end of the quartet, Lorca is calling not on God, but on his mother, and telling her that he doesn't want to die, which is just SO TRAGIC.  I'd also never really paid attention before to the fact that the schoolteacher's lines throughout all of this are, "Thirteen million schools in only two years; the children are reading and they will ask questions," which is such a bittersweet reflection of this opera's outlook on how, when all hope is lost in the present, one has to believe that the future will continue on regardless.  All of this eventually faded into projections onto the central curtain of children praying, with their voices playing over the projections.

The Interludio de Balazos is the part of this opera that has always, always made my blood run cold when I hear it. It's such an ingenious and disturbing and effective idea to turn a flurry of gunshots slowly into flamenco rhythms; I'd argue it's almost a meta reflection of how this opera attempts to take a war too horrifying to really be understood, and organizes it into art that can approximate understanding in a structure that feels comprehensible for the audience.  I didn't know what visuals were going to be applied here—I know that previous productions actually showed Lorca being shot—but here the lights went up on the Niñas in their red jumpsuits, each stepping forward one by one and dropping gruesomely as they were struck by the bullets in question, while Ruiz Alonso sang triumphantly amidst them.  It was brilliant and so horrible to watch, and it really captured what I'd always felt about that moment, in terms of just the sheer, senseless brutality of things.

Third Image: Margarita

I'd always assumed that all of the third "image" depicted Margarita Xirgu's slow death, so it surprised me when the final Balada began with Angel Blue walking slowly down the table on which Lorca had just died towards the audience, the Niñas and Nuria pressed close around the table as she lurched from side to side, and finally collapsed at the front end of the table.  This production made very clear that Margarita's final line in this scene—"Gracias, ahora ayúdame, debo salir a escena" ("Thank you, now help me, I need to make my entrance")—was the last thing she said to Nuria, given that Nuria was clearly grieving as Lorca entered for "Margarita, de mi fuente tu emerges," which I thought was an interesting dramatic choice.

The projections returned during "Tome su mano" and the following dance sequence, in that most of the dance sequence focused on a single flamenco dancer in a bata de cola on a table that was slowly pushed offstage with her posing on it (not really doing much dancing), while her face was projected above.  The dancer was very nicely backlit from the wing into which her table was being pushed, but I'd have preferred something more plot-relevant to fill that space?  Or at least actual dancing?  It was I think the only weak moment dramatically in what was such a cohesive and tightly woven dramatic concept, otherwise.

Photo credit: The Dance Enthusiast.

But I absolutely LOVED "Doy mi sangre," aka, the Rosenkavalier-inspired bit of this opera, which is a gorgeous trio between the three leads, based around the idea of shedding your blood for those not yet born but who will continue to tell the story of those who sacrificed themselves.  The repetition of the word "libertad" ("freedom") in slow, lingering, effortful-feeling octaves really hit home for me during this performance; I think this is possibly where I started crying and just kept on crying through the end of things.

Nuria's big moment. Photo credit: Bachtrack.

During the trio, a smaller cylindrical curtain made of red strips descended into the center of the central curtain, which seemed like a slightly too obvious nod to the idea of blood, so I was skeptical about that move.  But THEN, in the moments that followed during that amazing orchestral build that leads into the final moments of the show, Nuria stepped inside that red curtain and began reciting parts of Lorca's "Balada de la placeta," her voice crescendoing along with the music, and the words of Lorca's poem flickering in projection onto different parts of the central curtain.  It was SUCH a powerful way of really bringing Nuria into her own as a character within this narrative, as the person who was going to carry on the memory of Lorca and his work and his ideals and his sacrifice, despite his all-too-early death.  And to have Margarita come out and join Nuria in that inner red curtain during "Yo soy la libertad," while the Niñas slowly moved back into the outer central curtain for their final lines, was so beautiful and effective.

"Yo soy la libertad." Photo credit: The Dance Enthusiast.

Oh, and I should add that the curtain call was kind of adorable, in part because this was the final performance and everyone onstage was on a bit of a high accordingly, and also because one of the Niñas who went offstage to get a bouquet for Angel Blue somehow ended up trapped in the front line with the principals for all the final bows, and she looked embarrassed but delighted to have ended up in this situation (even though all the principals were clearly more than happy to have her there!).

Concluding Thoughts

I think this is the first time I've ever cried my way through a curtain call, but hey, if there's going to be a first time for that sort of thing, this feels like the right opera for it.  It was so overwhelming in the first place to even be at the Met that day, seeing an opera I'd wanted to see staged for so long, and then seeing such an AMAZING production that was so incredibly thoughtful and so well-performed.  There was a lot of discussion over dinner afterwards about just how sad it was to think that Lorca really did die that way, at such a young age (he was only 38).  But even though this is an opera about pain and loss, I see it even more so as an opera about memory and memorialization, and about the endurance of the human spirit, and about the importance of friendship and love and art, even in times of crisis and despair.  Even if it wasn't necessarily the most comforting opera to watch at the end of a week like the one I'd just had, it still was an oddly appropriate one.

As I've said elsewhere, I REALLY hope the Met brings this production back next season, and actually HD simulcasts it out this time, so I can tell everyone I know that they absolutely must go see this opera.  So, to anyone who's made it this far in this review, if that happens, go see this opera at your local cinema!!!  Or buy the DVD, after the fact, if they put one out (I certainly would). Even if I've just described it all in gory detail, I promise you won't be disappointed.  And if nothing else, given that this staging has also played in Detroit, Victoria, and Cardiff, I'll hope that the live production itself continues to make the rounds, so that as many people as possible can appreciate it.