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.

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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