Ainadamar
Encyclopedia
Ainadamar means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic, and is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov
. The libretto is by American
playwright
David Henry Hwang
. It premiered in Tanglewood
on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera
on July 30, 2005. It met its Chicago
premiere at the Ravinia Festival on June 14, 2006, and was staged by Opera Boston
in November 2007. Cincinnati Opera
presented the opera July 9 and 11, 2009.
The opera tells the story of playwright Federico García Lorca
and his lover and muse, Catalan
actress Margarita Xirgu
. A unique aspect of this opera is that the part of male Lorca is played by a woman. Subtitled "an Opera in Three Images," Ainadamar is told in reverse in a series of flashbacks, and involves Lorca's opposition to the Falange
, accusations of homosexuality, and his subsequent murder.
The first recording came out on Deutsche Grammophon
on May 9, 2006. It immediately sped to the top of the classical music Billboard
charts. It was recorded by the artists for whom it was written, including Dawn Upshaw
as Xirgu, Kelley O'Connor
as Lorca, Jessica Rivera as Nuria, and conducted by Robert Spano
with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
and women of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus.
Both the recording and the opera met immediate critical acclaim. The recording has won two Grammy Awards: Best Opera Recording of 2006, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Like much of Golijov's work, the opera heavily incorporates Arab and Jewish idioms, as well as Spanish flamenco sounds — in fact, there is a flamenco guitar section incorporated into the orchestra.
Ainadamar has features of both an opera and a passion play, as it examines the powerful symbolic role Lorca has embodied after his death, especially among other artists. Lorca becomes a martyr in the name of freedom of artistic expression. The connections with the Baroque passion musical concept also occur structurally, as the work evolves as a series of arias, recurring choruses and dance genres. The symbolic aspect was emphasized visually by Peter Sellars
in his staging for Santa Fe Opera. Ainadamar also connects with previous operatic traditions, like in the casting of Lorca as a trouser-role, in a manner parallel to other impetuous youths of opera, such as Cherubino
or Octavian
. These characteristics have allowed Ainadamar to begin a successful performance run as a non-staged or semi-staged concert work. Crucially, it appears that performances by a younger generation of singers may prompt an assimilation into the canon — and with it, an integration of the Ibero-American musical languages it espouses into Classical music — through upcoming presentations in major conservatories like the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music under Carmen Helena Téllez
(2007) and the Curtis Institute of Music under Corrado Rovaris (2008). A concert version was scheduled for Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in December 2008, with Upshaw and O'Connor.
A recent performance of the opera took place in Granada, cornerstone of Federico Farcía Lorca's life and death during the 60th edition of International Musica and Dance Festival of Granada. This consisted in a brand new production by the festivals of Granada, Santander and Oviedo under Luis de Tavira and conductor Corrado Rovaris. The performances took place on June 25 and 27, 2011 at the Alhambra Nasrid palace.
Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is a Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.-Biography:Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of...
. The libretto is by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang
David Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
. It premiered in Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...
on July 30, 2005. It met its Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
premiere at the Ravinia Festival on June 14, 2006, and was staged by Opera Boston
Opera Boston
Opera Boston is an opera company in Boston, Massachusetts. It specializes in innovative repertoire and rarely heard works, along with opera education and outreach programs designed to bring opera education to children, in schools and after-school programs throughout the Boston area.Its home base is...
in November 2007. Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States .-History:...
presented the opera July 9 and 11, 2009.
The opera tells the story of playwright Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
and his lover and muse, Catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
actress Margarita Xirgu
Margarita Xirgu
Margarita Xirgu, also Margarida Xirgu was a Catalan stage actress, who was greatly popular throughout her country and Latin America. A friend of the poet Federico García Lorca, she was forced into exile during Francisco Franco's dictatorship of Spain, but continued her work in America...
. A unique aspect of this opera is that the part of male Lorca is played by a woman. Subtitled "an Opera in Three Images," Ainadamar is told in reverse in a series of flashbacks, and involves Lorca's opposition to the Falange
Falange
The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....
, accusations of homosexuality, and his subsequent murder.
The first recording came out on Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
on May 9, 2006. It immediately sped to the top of the classical music Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
charts. It was recorded by the artists for whom it was written, including Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary...
as Xirgu, Kelley O'Connor
Kelley O'Connor
Kelley O'Connor is an American mezzo-soprano. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and her Masters' degree in Music from the University of California, Los Angeles....
as Lorca, Jessica Rivera as Nuria, and conducted by Robert Spano
Robert Spano
Robert Spano is an American conductor and pianist. Since 2001 he has been Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra , and he served as Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic from 1996 to 2004...
with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001...
and women of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus.
Both the recording and the opera met immediate critical acclaim. The recording has won two Grammy Awards: Best Opera Recording of 2006, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. Like much of Golijov's work, the opera heavily incorporates Arab and Jewish idioms, as well as Spanish flamenco sounds — in fact, there is a flamenco guitar section incorporated into the orchestra.
Ainadamar has features of both an opera and a passion play, as it examines the powerful symbolic role Lorca has embodied after his death, especially among other artists. Lorca becomes a martyr in the name of freedom of artistic expression. The connections with the Baroque passion musical concept also occur structurally, as the work evolves as a series of arias, recurring choruses and dance genres. The symbolic aspect was emphasized visually by Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
in his staging for Santa Fe Opera. Ainadamar also connects with previous operatic traditions, like in the casting of Lorca as a trouser-role, in a manner parallel to other impetuous youths of opera, such as Cherubino
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
or Octavian
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
. These characteristics have allowed Ainadamar to begin a successful performance run as a non-staged or semi-staged concert work. Crucially, it appears that performances by a younger generation of singers may prompt an assimilation into the canon — and with it, an integration of the Ibero-American musical languages it espouses into Classical music — through upcoming presentations in major conservatories like the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music under Carmen Helena Téllez
Carmen Helena Téllez
Carmen Helena Téllez is a Venezuelan-American music conductor. Reviewed as "a quiet force behind contemporary music in the United States today” , she has concentrated her career on the exploration of the relationship of music with other arts through her performances of contemporary works for...
(2007) and the Curtis Institute of Music under Corrado Rovaris (2008). A concert version was scheduled for Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke's in December 2008, with Upshaw and O'Connor.
A recent performance of the opera took place in Granada, cornerstone of Federico Farcía Lorca's life and death during the 60th edition of International Musica and Dance Festival of Granada. This consisted in a brand new production by the festivals of Granada, Santander and Oviedo under Luis de Tavira and conductor Corrado Rovaris. The performances took place on June 25 and 27, 2011 at the Alhambra Nasrid palace.
Roles
The performers listed are those on the 2006 Deutsche Grammophon recording.| Margarita Xirgu, an actress | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
Dawn Upshaw Dawn Upshaw Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary... |
| Federico García Lorca | mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above... |
Kelley O'Connor Kelley O'Connor Kelley O'Connor is an American mezzo-soprano. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and her Masters' degree in Music from the University of California, Los Angeles.... |
| Nuria, a favorite student of Margarita | soprano | Jessica Rivera Jessica Rivera Jessica Rivera is an American soprano of Peruvian ancestry. She is a 1996 graduate of Pepperdine University, and earned her Master of Music degree in 1998 from the University of Southern California's Flora L. Thornton School of Music... |
| Ruiz Alonso, a Falangist officer | Flamenco vocalist | Jesús Montoya |
| José Tripaldi, a Falangist guard | baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
Eduardo Chama |
| Maestro, a teacher | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... |
Sean Mayer |
| Torero, a bullfighter | tenor | Rob Asklof |
Sources and external links
- Ainadamar at the Opera Company of Philadelphia
- program notes from Ainadamar performance at Ravinia Festival, 2006
- review of tanglewood premiere by Alex Ross, September 1, 2003, New Yorker magazine
- Composer's Page
- Granada International Music and Dance Festival