United States Gabriela Lena Frank, El último sueño de Frida y Diego: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera / Roberto Kalb (conductor). Struggle Memorial Opera Home, San Francisco, 13.6.2023. (HS)

Manufacturing:
Libretto – Nilo Cruz
Director – Lorena Maza
Units – Jorge Ballina
Costumes – Eloise Kazan
Lighting – Victor Zapatero
Choreographer – Colm Seery

Solid:
Frida Kahlo – Daniela Mack
Diego Rivera – Alfredo Daza
Catrina – Yaritza Véliz
Leonardo – Jake Ingbar

The pathbreaking painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera outlined how artwork can mirror Mexican tradition visually. Frida overcame her isolation and unimaginable ache from a trolley accident to supply indelible photos of herself that additionally celebrated Mexican character. Diego portrayed Mexican tradition in murals, all of the whereas railing in opposition to capitalism and racism. Additionally they had a stormy marriage, rife with extramarital affairs and complex emotions.

A San Francisco Opera co-commission, El último sueño de Frida y Diego (The final dream of Frida and Diego) burst onto the corporate’s major stage Tuesday. Moderately than attempt to inform their life tales, the two-hour and fifteen-minute opera harnesses the vivid colours and unique parts of Mexico’s Dîa de los Muertos (Day of the Useless) tradition to look at what Frida and Diego meant to one another.

Composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Niko Cruz got here up with a kind of inverted model of the Orpheus fable that led to so many nice operas. It made a stunning, absorbing, considerate capstone to the corporate’s hundredth-anniversary season. John Adams’s contemporary, new Antony and Cleopatra final September obtained issues began with a bang, and 2022-23 has gone from energy to energy, maybe the corporate’s greatest and most constant season ever.

For the music, Frank wove Latin-American parts right into a rating that painted in sound the stability between the protagonists’ Mexican tradition and internationally acknowledged artwork. The sound of a marimba harmonizing, the rhythms of a spread of percussion and the colours of harmonies related to Mexican music underlie vocal strains that merge naturally with the Cuban-born librettist Cruz’s phrases.

One recurring musical gesture, a sustained high-lying melodic determine, appeared to be related to dying. Celesta and violin play it in parallel, however a half-step aside to create a quiet dissonance. The rating teems with shade, seldom strident, at all times intent on finishing the emotional image of the second. As massive and triumphant as Act I’s finish was, the opera completed on a quiet, wistful word. Mexican conductor Roberto Kalb, at present music director of Detroit Opera, formed and paced every thing immaculately, with properly responsive taking part in from the orchestra.

The story line begins three years after Frida’s dying with Diego and neighbors on the cemetery on the eve of Día de los Muertos. La Catrina, the keeper of the useless, hears Diego’s want to see Frida another time and, again within the underworld, she urges Frida to seem to him, as customized permits. She is reluctant to relive the ache she suffered for years, however one other art-loving soul – Leonardo, an actor who needs to be Greta Garbo – convinces Frida to take the chance, not a lot to reunite with Diego however to make artwork once more. Frida seems to Diego in a dream, and a annoyed, exhausted Diego decides he needs to die so he can stay with Frida.

The 4 principals distinguished themselves with beautiful singing. Mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack spanned the rating’s vast vocal vary with ease, and portrayed Frida with moment-to-moment subtlety. Alfredo Daza, born in Puebla, Mexico, deployed a gentle baritone as Diego, conveying the character’s grief and remorse. (Each sang these roles final 12 months in San Diego. They’re additionally merchandise of San Francisco Opera’s Merola program, Mack in 2007-2009, Daza in 1997.)

As La Catrina, Chilean soprano Yaritza Véliz almost stole the present. She created a commanding determine in her masks and form-fitting black-and-brown costume, and managed the coloratura calls for of her vocal line with pizzazz. (She is singing Mimì in La bohème at Glyndebourne and Alice Ford in Falstaff at Berlin’s Komische Oper.) Countertenor Jake Ingbar, an everyday with Dutch Nationwide Opera, lent a louche side to Leonardo, wearing deep crimson with Garbo’s signature turban hat.

Refrain members stuffed an extended record of comprimario roles, and an enormous refrain portrayed each actual life Mexicans and dream souls within the underworld, singing with gusto all through.

All of it performed out in a collection of huge set items, delineated by a huge body that encompassed many of the proscenium. Act I’s cemetery glistened with ranges of memorial candles that rose to create a roof-like umbrella for the climactic second when Frida accedes to return for someday. Act II included a theatrical coup, smaller frames dropping all the way down to set off three of Frida’s well-known self-portraits, posed for stay.

Credit score the Mexico Metropolis-based manufacturing workers, who additionally did the San Diego premiere final 12 months, for getting essentially the most out of the visible and dramatic parts. Director Lorena Maza made every thing really feel pure, regardless of the supernatural features of the story. Jorge Ballina’s set designs and Victor Zapatero’s lighting caught the attention with out dropping the thread of the story, and costume designer Eloise Kazan made every thing look proper, utilizing colours correctly and vividly.

One motive for co-commissioning this work was to succeed in out to the Bay Space’s vibrant Latin-American neighborhood. To that finish, actions within the courtyard between the opera home and Veterans Constructing earlier than every efficiency included rituals, dancing and tamales to set the tone. Even the projected titles joined in, English translations above the stage and Spanish on two facet screens.

Companions in commissioning the opera have been San Diego Opera (which shared the manufacturing), Fort Price Opera and DePauw College Faculty of Music, with assist from the College of Texas at Austin Faculty of High-quality Arts. Los Angeles Opera has it on the schedule for subsequent season, with New York’s Metropolitan Opera to observe.

Harvey Steiman