nothin Opera Heads Up The Amazon | New Haven Independent

Opera Heads Up The Amazon

A steamboat is churning up the Amazon, heading for the city of Manaus. Florencia Grimaldi, a soprano, is going to sing at the opera house there, hoping to find a lost lover. Rosalba, a journalist, is there to try to write a book about Grimaldi, but falls in love with the nephew of the steamboat’s captain in the process. So far so good — until a storm rises and creates havoc. Will the ship make it to Manaus? Will Rosalba find love? Will Florencia find her lover?

If that plot seems operatic, that’s because it is; it’s in the first act of Florencia en la Amazonas, a Spanish-language opera by Mexican composer Daniel Catán with a libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Barain, which is inspired by the work of acclaimed Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, one of the founders of the world-dominating movement in literature known as magical realism.

The opera has become nearly a classic since its premiere in 1996, with multiple productions at major opera houses across the United States and in Europe. And this weekend, Feb. 14 to Feb. 16, it’s coming to the Shubert Theatre thanks to Yale Opera.

It’s a unique opera, written in Spanish, and it has had a pretty strong legacy for a new opera,” said director Candace Evans. Evans should know; she has had a hand in fostering that legacy, having directed Florencia for the San Diego Opera after developing the production at Indiana University. Evans received training in opera and ballet, but her terminal degree is in acting.

Evans.

I’ve saturated myself in text work and dramatic arc. That’s really powerful and important to me,” Evans said. In talking to Doris Yarick-Cross about Florencia, Yale Opera’s artistic director, she found that Yarick-Cross was intrigued by the piece for the same reason that I am, which is that every character in this opera matters. Nobody’s just standing there holding a tray. Everyone has an arc, a revelation. I don’t know any other opera that does this.”

This makes it a good fit for Yale Opera. As Yale Opera wishes to develop the craft of young singers, the acting requirements of the piece are important and developmentally interesting,” Evans said. But it also accounts for some of its success since its 1996 premiere. I’ve done the piece with full-on Spanish-speaking professionals who revel in the fact that they can take their characters on an emotional journey,” Evans said.

García Márquez’s inspiration plays a role as well. My personal take is that the Amazon is the lead character,” Evans said. It’s what provides the magical realism that was the intention of the composer…. The river journey itself is what’s transformational, so it’s important to me that the river is personified.” Evans sees other dramatic antecedents in the opera as well. I’ve often likened it to a Shakespearean drama, where characters get lost in the woods and have a transformation.”

But — as in García Márquez’s own work — not all is sheer fantasy. The action of the play takes place about 100 years ago, and there’s a cholera outbreak that plays a role in the plot. It’s part of the world at that time,” Evans said. We’re sitting in the world of the coronavirus. That’s not something we’re used to. But it was normal then.”

Since its premiere, and as its stature has grown, Catán’s opera has been part of the ongoing conversation about the development of classical music as it moves into the 21st century. The arias in the opera have been compared to those of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who wrote some of the most romantic arias in the operatic canon. It’s written for the voice in the way that Puccini writes for the voice,” Evans said.

This means some critics have derided the opera as being sentimental. Evans’s lighthearted answer: Well, isn’t that opera?”

Sentiment, if you define it, means caring about something. Being sentimental has become pejorative, but that’s not the derivation. We all care about something. You don’t sing unless you care about something,” she added.

Sentimentality also happens to be a hallmark of much Latin American music, from tango to banda sinaloense, and Catán’s score draws from that as much as the operatic tradition. It’s a Puccini layer cake — it has Debussy, it has modernity, and it is saturated in Latin American music,” Evans said. When was the last time you heard a marimba in opera?”

The context of the opera also gives Evans a chance for a real set piece. In my production, the boat moves,” she said. And to me that’s critical, because we need to feel as an audience that we are going into the jungle too. We are not just watching people have an experience…. When I go to the theater, I want to feel like I get to take the trip too.”

The opera is part of Evans’s personal journey, too. In addition to having worked on previous productions, she had a chance to meet Catán before he died in 2011, at the age of 62. Beyond the fact that it’s a sad loss of human life, it’s a sad loss of a wonderful composer, because his voice was a beautiful one.”

That Catán left his mark on the opera world with Florencia, however, is increasingly undeniable. I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to work on this piece because it’s a turn in the road in opera,” Evans said — from writing in Spanish to drawing on Latin American music to having an opera set there.

And it’s Valentine’s Day, for pity’s sake,” Evans said of the fortuitous timing of the Shubert run. In love or not, it is a romantic journey.”

Florencia en el Amazonas runs at the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., from Feb. 14 to Feb. 16. Visit Yale Opera’s website for tickets and more information.

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

There were no comments