James Gill
Showing bold enterprise, the Madison Opera closes its season with the local premiere of a “modern” opera, Florencia en el Amazonas.
Its composer, Mexican-born Daniel Catán, was becoming one of the most important of recent opera composers until his untimely death at age 62 in 2011. Florencia en el Amazonas, his breakthrough work, is fascinating and provocative — but also complicated, with many levels of meaning ranging from the romantic to the symbolic. The opera tells a story of a journey down the Amazon River, but also on the river of life. Love is important — not in traditional romantic simplistics, but as a force in life, determining what paths we will follow amid so many other choices we make. It is also about the passage from reality into fantasy, at least for the title character, an opera singer who seeks the final vindication of her life and choices through this journey.
The work’s musical style is typical of most contemporary opera writing, involving not lyrical set pieces but constant parlando singing — steady talking (in Spanish) set to propulsive music. The audience would be lost without the flow of surtitles. If not melodic, the vocal writing is nevertheless strongly conceived, while the rich orchestral dimension shows the composer as a master of colors and textures.
Scenically, the production is quite superb. The clever, wonderfully detailed set, designed for Arizona Opera, vividly represents the vessel and its journey, aided by imaginative lighting. Christine McIntyre’s stage direction is full of apt movement. The use of Lisa Thurrell’s troupe of female dancers is rather extensive, and often distracting, but serves to personify the river and its world in interesting ways.
The seven important roles are as much about acting as singing, but both are brought off splendidly by this team. Elizabeth Caballero and Rachel Sterrenberg, as the famous singer Florencia Grimaldi and her would-be biographer, Rosalba, are each strong and lustrous in conveying their characters. Adriana Zabata and Levi Hernandez are a disillusioned and bitter couple who touchingly find new meaning in their marriage. Mackenzie Whitney is properly ardent as the frustrated officer who finds hope in loving Rosalba. Ashraf Sewailam is an interestingly philosophical captain.
This is not the opera of Verdi and Puccini. It is opera of ideas, rather than of hit tunes. But it keeps one listening, and has one thinking long after the performance. I consider this one of the most important and representative operas of our time.
