The Met’s new production of Gabriela Lena Frank’s opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego was telecast today. It was the final show of the 25-26 series of broadcasts.
The opera takes place on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), November 2, 1957, the year of Diego Rivera’s death and three years after Frida Kahlo’s death. Diego is old, lonely, and consumed by grief. He longs for one more reunion with Frida before he dies. Diego’s yearning reaches the underworld, where the keeper of the dead, La Catrina, summons Frida and asks her to accompany Diego on his final journey toward death. Frida is reluctant. In death, she has finally escaped the terrible physical pain that dominated her life after childhood polio, a bus accident, and numerous surgeries.
Frida and Diego wander through Mexico City, particularly the dreamlike landscape of Alameda Park, where the living and the dead mingle freely. The boundary between reality and imagination dissolves, much as it does in Frida’s paintings. The lovers reminisce about their tumultuous marriage – its passion, betrayals, artistic triumphs, and mutual dependence. Diego begs Frida to embrace him, but La Catrina has imposed a rule: Frida must not touch him. If she does, she risks recovering the pain from which death has liberated her.
Eventually, Diego’s pleas become irresistible. Frida embraces him. The moment is both ecstatic and tragic. By touching him she regains the suffering she had left behind in death. The reunion reveals the opera’s central idea: love and pain are inseparable. One cannot reclaim the former without risking the latter.
As the day ends, Diego must face his mortality. He finally accepts death and follows Frida into the underworld. The opera concludes not with loss but with reunion. The lovers, separated by death throughout the story, are ultimately united beyond it.
There’s another character, Leonardo, who seems to have wandered into the opera by mistake, as his role in the story is unapparent. He’s an actor and a Greta Garbo impersonator. The opera’s story is sort of a reverse of that of Orpheus. It is largely symbolic and meant to depict the persistence of love after death, with a bit of memory as a form of immortality. It served as a serviceable vehicle for the production.
An opera succeeds or not virtually entirely on the quality of its music. Frank’s orchestra was cleverly constructed, but there were few to no first-rate ideas. The production was imaginatively and colorfully staged. The costumes were vivid. Especially noteworthy were the skeleton dancers whose movements were quirky and engaging.
The best performance of the afternoon was by Gabriella Reyes, who played Catrina, the keeper of the underworld. Her costume, which was skeletal, took more than three hours to don. She sang with vocal security and moved with vigor and panache.
Isabel Leonard sang very well and also looked beautiful despite Gray Halvorson’s endoscopic closeups. She was committed to the role and realized as much as was in it.
Veteran baritone Carlos Álvarez got to sing in his native language for the first time at the Met and one of the rare times anywhere. He made his Met debut in 1996 and has sung 35 times with the company over the intervening three decades. His part is not that demanding, though at times his sound was harsh and forced. He was clad in a fat suit to mimic the large size of the real Diego Rivera.
Counter tenor Nils Wanderer was Leonardo, the guy who seemed in the wrong opera. He made as much as was possible of this strange character. His voice was well-produced and sounded like that of a mezzo soprano.
Deborah Colker’s production was better than the story or the music. It was reason enough to attend the performance. The scenes of 50s Mexico City and the underworld, or wherever the dead of this story were kept, were bright and imaginative.
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was clad in a colorful shirt that costume designers Jon Bausor or Wilberth Gonzalez could have made for him. Had he gone onstage, he would have fit right in with the colorful Mexican characters. His orchestra, as is their usual practice, played with precision and style.
So what’s the likely fate of another new opera staged by the Met? Almost certainly, that of all the new operas staged by the company over almost a century and a half (save two by Puccini) gradual oblivion.
El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego
Music by Gabriela Lena Frank
Libretto by Nilo Cruz
Conductor
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Frida Kahlo
Isabel Leonard
Diego Rivera
Carlos Álvarez
Catrina
Gabriella Reyes
Leonardo
Nils Wanderer
First Villager
Paul Corona
Second Villager / Young Man
Angel Raii Gomez
Third Villager
Scott Conner
First Frida Image
Kresley Figueroa
Second Frida Image
Mary Beth Nelson
Third Frida Image
Cecelia McKinley
Production Team
Production: Deborah Colker
Set Design: Jon Bausor
Costume Design: Jon Bausor and Wilberth Gonzalez
Lighting Design: Adam Silverman
Video Director: Gary Halvorson.
