Operas in Concert: Art’s Afterlives
El último sueño de Frida y Diego
Gabriela Lena Frank/Nilo Cruz
Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera is a “magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.” Written to a Spanish libretto by her long-time collaborator (and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright) Nilo Cruz, El último sueño inverts the Orfeo myth, with Kahlo returning from the underworld to aid Rivera as his own life concludes. Set around the Day of the Dead and laced with tumult and humor, and with forthcoming productions at The Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, Frank’s “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) is ripe for concert staging.
Suggested Soloists: Frida: Isabel Leonard, Guadalupe Paz, Daniela Mack; Diego: Carlos Álvarez, Alfredo Daza
trailer, LA Opera
John Corigliano/William M. Hoffman, suggested by Beaumarchais’ “La mère coupable”
Both a contemporary opera buffa and a meditation on how change is effected in politics and art, Corigliano and Hoffman’s landmark opera The Ghosts of Versailles is “comic and serious, entertaining and erudite, silly and thoughtful, emotional and mysterious, harrowing and uplifting, intimate and over-the-top” (Los Angeles Times). The piece centers on an opera-in-an-opera concocted by the ghost of the playwright Beaumarchais, who has fallen madly in love with the ghost of Marie Antoinette but must lift her out of her long mourning for her execution so that she can entertain his affections. Familiar characters from the court of Louis XVI and The Marriage of Figaro make the piece a particular treat for students of history and opera lovers alike, and projections by Jerome Sirlin offer a visually engaging concert presentation.
Suggested Soloists: Patricia Racette, Yelena Dyachek (Marie Antoinette); Christopher Maltman, Jonathan Bryan (Beaumarchais); Lucas Meachem, Ben Schaefer (Figaro); Joshua Guerrero, Brian Wallin (Count Almaviva); Lucy Schaufer, Kayla Siembieda (Susanna)
trailer, Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles
© Armin Bardel/Theater an der Wien
Gian Carlo Menotti called the music of Goya “outrageously melodic”, adding that “it is obvious that this is an opera commissioned by a tenor and written for a tenor.” The title role of Spanish painter Francisco Goya is indeed a rich, meaty part that offers both soaring melodic lines and an enticing imagination of the artist’s personal life. With Puccini-like textures, Goya is both the story of a dramatic love affair and Menotti’s final meditation on the agony and ecstasy of creativity.
excerpt, Washington Opera
Art’s Afterlives | Feminist Essays | Casting Off Chains: Abolition and the Civil War | The Americas: Latine Culture and History | East Asian Love Stories | Positively Medieval: Stories of the Middle Ages and Renaissance | Classics of English Fiction | The 19th Century: Great Wars and Colonial Sorrows | Upheavals of the 20th Century | The Weight of Motherhood