Frank’s partnership with Cruz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, has been fruitful in the concert hall, but this is their first opera.
Their subject is extremely familiar — the love of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera — but the treatment is less biographical and more mythic.
But here, instead of the hero traveling to the underworld to retrieve a lost love, the protagonist journeys to the land of the living.
In both cases, though, a creative spirit is required to cross borders, and there are dire consequences for any missteps.
And rather than tell a life story — which in opera tends to result in episodic, undramatic works — Cruz hews to classical unities, with a focused plot that unfolds on the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Persons:
Cruz, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera —, Eurydice, Kahlo, — Cruz hews, Diego —, Alfredo Daza, —, Frida, Daniela Mack, doesn’t, Leonardo, Jake Ingbar, Yaritza Véliz, Lorena Maza, Jorge Ballina’s, Eloise Kazan’s
Organizations:
Azul