Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears

Performing an opera in a concert version is always risky. Opera implies large forces in motion and heightened gestures – in the music, psychological intensity and dramatic action. Opera invokes visions, spectacular settings and characters whose flaws or deeds are grand, unstoppable. I suspect one reason the three tenors from a decade ago were so successful is that they carried their entire careers in their voices and on their shoulders when they took the stage. They also represented an opera of another time and world. The stories of Wagner, Verdi, Puccini and the rest emerged from powerful social and political moments; and they possessed histories and defined compositional languages that could encompass myths and great passions. Past the 19th century, in America, Gershwin, Bernstein and Glass have pushed the concept and production of opera in other directions that have yet to be fully realized.

All of which is to say that the work of the Argentine-American Osvaldo Golijov is not only astonishing for his imaginative abilities as a composer, but feels exactly right as a style for opera in an internationalized world that must come to grips with its recent past and complicated present. Golijov, whose parents were Eastern European Jews, has lived in Argentina, Israel and the Northeastern U.S. He freely draws on the music of many cultures and, with a spare, graceful melodic sensibility and centered rhythmic choices, he creates thoughtful, emotional works that beg questions of time and place and meaning. Several years ago, he composed a Bach inspired version of the Christ’s crucifixion set to Afro-Caribbean dance and song forms. With Dawn Upshaw, who is the principle voice of “Ainadamar,” he produced a wide ranging collection of folk songs.

Musically, “Ainadamar” (which means Fountain of Tears) is an opera with women’s voices, composed electronic soundings, and stylizations of Yiddish, Arabic, Gypsy, Cuban and flamenco music. The snapping of flamenco dancers’ heel and passages with Spanish guitar and trumpeted themes punctuate the opera. The libretto, by David Henry Hwang, is based on the murder of the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, by Franco’s Fascist soldiers in Granada in 1936. Lorca, a writer of darkly symbolic and charged surreal poetry, reveled in a type of flamenco that was called “deep song.” He had written a play, “Mariana Pineda,” which celebrates a 19th century woman who died for revolutionary causes. Mariana Pineda was played by the actress, Marianna Xirgu, a friend of Lorca’s, who fled Spain after his death and continued to play the role in theaters in Latin America. Xirgu was convinced that she could have saved Lorca and it is her memories and anguish that underscore the emotions in Golijov’s “Ainadamar.”

The opera opens with rumbling sounds of water and horses hooves, over which the sounds of Spain and the music of its many peoples twine together until a flamenco rhythm emerges. A chorus of six women sing, “What a sad day it was in Granada, the stones began to cry.” On stage, we see a distraught Marianna Xirgu (Dawn Upshaw), who once again prepares to play Marianna Pineda in a small theater. It is 1969 in Montevideo, Uruguay and she is feeling the weight of age and memory. A younger actress, Nuria (Emily Albrink), tries to calm her as she begins to tell her story in a “balada” (which will be repeated three more times). There is a flashback to the first meeting of Xirgu with Lorca in a café in 1927. Lorca is sung by a mezzo-soprano (Kelly O’Connor). Slender, dressed in a black suit with her dark hair in a pony tail, O’Connor gestures with fluid but sharp movements. Lorca is passionate and determined to sing of freedom in his country, though he is aware of the hostile political forces that surround him. A homosexual, he is despised by the military and particularly by the Fascist functionary Ruiz Alonso (Jesus Montoya) who, in a forceful flamenco tenor voice, shouts “Give him up, by God, the one with the swollen head!” In a scene later in the performance, recorded male voices, as if from a radio broadcast, call for ‘hunting the dogs’ who oppose the Fascists. It is, in part, this complicated playing out of male military power against female sadness and loss that add complexity and depth to “Ainadamar.”

The 80 minute production consists of 31 scenes, each one of which concentrates mood, carries the story forward, and shimmers with layered melodic material and tight orchestration. There is a confession scene where Lorca, who was 36, is asked by a priest to repent, though he believes he has done nothing wrong. He is killed by a fusillade of rifle shots (reproduced electronically) that turn into a menacing flamenco. The final sections feature Xirgu with Nuria and the female chorus lamenting the spilling of blood and the tragic history of Spain, Lorca and Margarita Xirgu.

Without sets, lighting, movement and costume, the flow of performance is on the drama of the music and voices that can represent emotion and psychological transformation. Conductor Michael Christie is remarkably graceful, and he made the fullness of Golijov’s score apparent. Originally performed by Dawn Upshaw and Kelly O’Connor, they relate to each other as characters and their presence on stage, along with Emily Albrink’s Nuria, contributed to a production centered on the traumas and attempts at understanding by women in times of deep trauma. In several sections, Michael Christie turned sideways and, while keeping time, seemingly extended a comforting hand to the singers. On the evening I attended, it became their story more than anything else. In fact, the chorus of women and tenor Jesus Montoya were seated among the musicians on stage, so they functioned like witnesses rather than figures in the action.

In a theatricalized version I saw in Philadelphia earlier this year, the chorus of women were showgirls, in a variety of costumes in the backstage room, and they moved and danced to the rumbas and other music. Lorca was dressed in a tuxedo, an obvious but effective attempt to further complicate his gender preferences. And, Ruiz Alonso, adorned in Falangist uniform, loomed over the stage in bloody red light. In all, the full sweep of the historical moments (1927, 1936 and 1969) came into focus. Yet, unlike in 19th century opera, the tragic elements extended to an entire country, artists, and those with differences (in gender, religion, pasts) who could be present in music and art, but were put at risk and eventually eradicated. As Golijov’s score elaborates itself through various genres and cultural references, it engages us in the present to find ways to recognize and affirm the many ways there are to be in the world. And to never forget what repressive forces can and will do.

“Ainadamar” (which is on Deutsche Grammaphon CD with Upshaw and O’Connor) is a major work and will likely be in some repertoires for a long time to come. It is a great credit to Michael Christie to have brought the work to Phoenix.