Ainadamar: A Fountain of Tears for the Ages

Photo by Ken Howard, courtesy of Santa Fe Opera (2005 production). Note the spectacular scenic design by Gronk.

Below is my review of "Ainadamar" from last summer's (August 2005) performance at Santa Fe Opera. Cincinnati Opera will bring it here in 2009. Here's the season announcement.
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After Cincinnati Opera's season ended, I visited another summer festival -- Santa Fe Opera -- to see "Ainadamar," a stunning new opera by Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov and author David Henry Hwang. Powerful, moving and exquisitely crafted, "Ainadamar" is just the kind of new work that Cincinnati Opera might aspire to present, especially given a growing Hispanic population in the region.

Opening night was sold out weeks before its Santa Fe premiere last Saturday, and had the audience (more than half from out of state) on its feet cheering at its conclusion.

Part of the magic of going to Santa Fe is the opera house's breathtaking outdoor setting, poised like a giant ship nestled in the mountains at 7,000 feet. (They keep oxygen in the wings for the singers.) In the deepening evening sky, the twinkling lights of Los Alamos can be seen through the set.

More than 55,000 opera lovers annually attend its five productions under general director Richard Gaddes. John Crosby, who founded the company 49 years ago, died in 2002.

Many are familiar with the song, "Granada," romanticized by Spanish tenor Placido Domingo. But "Ainadamar" deals with the violent death there of Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, as seen through the eyes of his principal interpreter, actress Margarita Xirgu(pronounced SHIR-gu). Ainadamar, which means "fountain of tears," was the place where Fascists executed Lorca at age 32, the first of thousands killed in Granada during the Spanish Civil War.

The opera was a mesmerizing intersection of true history, the fantastic imagination of Hwang and the musical genius of Golijov, who is known for weaving Latin melodies and rhythms and Eastern European klezmer music into his scores.

Although the one-act opera premiered unsuccessfully at Tanglewood in 2003, it underwent massive revisions up to, literally, last week. Now 75 minutes in length, it is an inspired collaboration between four major artists: Golijov, whose "St. Mark Passion" swept up the music world in 2000; Hwang, who won a Tony for "M. Butterfly"; director Peter Sellars, known for works such as John Adams' "Nixon in China" (coming to Cincinnati Opera in 2007); and Gronk, a Los Angeles-based painter and performance artist.

Sung in Spanish, the piece is divided into three seamless "images," including Margarita's flashback to her role in Lorca's play about Mariana Pineda, a 19th-century Spanish revolutionary martyr.

In the final image, the dying actress, who kept Lorca's plays alive while in exile in Latin America, passes on Lorca's legacy to her student, Nuria (sung with great beauty by Jessica Rivera).

Gronk's set design was nothing short of spectacular -- Guernica-like painted murals covering three walls and the stage floor, a surreal canvas of seeds, flames and body parts.

The opera opened with the sound of water -- the fountain -- followed by a remarkable counterpoint of Spanish rhythms and toreador fanfares. Not only is Golijov’s music an entertaining tapestry of jazzy, earthy rhythms, his gift for melody is extraordinary. His rapturous melodies, he says, were inspired by the three major cultures of Spain: Arab, Jewish and Christian, as well as Gypsy-flamenco elements.

Cantorial-like, they were tinged with Eastern-European pathos. At times, the singer was accompanied solely by flamenco guitar. In the more jarring moments, hate speeches by Spanish generals were broadcast, "to have the violence of the speeches as a bombing raid," said Sellars in a panel discussion earlier.

It all unfolded, dreamlike. Dawn Upshaw was completely absorbing as Margarita. Her persona could be radiant or tragically dark, and the depth of her emotion was profound. "My eyes are dry because I have wept a river of tears," she sings.

A chorus of young women in simple black dresses encircled the principal singers in a graceful, almost mystical choreography, first as little girls singing a charming ballad, later wailing and imitating tolling bells with their arms. The ballad returns in each tableau, a haunting, unifying theme.

Because the Tanglewood cast was all female, Lorca is a "pants" role, richly sung by mezzo Kelley O'Connor, a member of Santa Fe's apprentice program. In a new scene -- the opera's most lighthearted moment -- Margarita begs Lorca to flee with her to Havana in a sensuous, carefree duet. Lorca refuses, saying, "Spain is a bull that is burning alive."

Lorca's execution, along with a teacher and a bullfighter, is a flamenco fugue of gunshots, disturbingly repeated over and over, "like seeing it three times a day on CNN," Sellars explained.

The end is a dreamlike episode, in which the dying Margarita confronts a soldier with an improvisatory melody, "I am freedom," that is sadly defiant. The chorus returns with "It was a sad day in Granada," and we are left with the sound of water and tolling bells.

Rising star conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya led the orchestra wonderfully.

Note: This summer (2006) is Santa Fe Opera's 50th anniversary season. Tickets: (800) 280-4654 or www.santafeopera.org.