INTRODUCTION

The opera is told through Xirgu’s memories in a series of flashbacks as the past invades the present.

First Image Mariana

As the opera begins, Margarita Xirgu prepares once again to go on stage as Mariana Pineda as a group of young actresses sing the opening ballad. She remembers the brilliance of Lorca to her young student Nuria, recalling her meeting with Lorca in a bar in Madrid where he describes his play to her for the first time. Lorca idolized Pineda, whose statue could be seen from his window at the Lorca family home in Granada. The flashback is interrupted by the Falangist Ramon Ruiz Alonso, broadcasting over the state radio that his party will stamp out the beginnings of the revolution.

Second Image Federico

The Spanish Civil War has begun. Xirgu pleads with Lorca to join her and her theater company in Cuba, but he refuses and stays in Granada. Xirgu blames herself for Lorca’s fate, since she could not convince the idealistic young man to abandon Spain. In Xirgu’s memories, she sings of her dream of finding freedom in Cuba, but Lorca insists that he must witness and write about his country’s suffering on the barricades.

Third Image Margarita

Xirgu is dying. In the present, she insists on performing Pineda’s story one more time—she tells Nuria that an actor lives only for a moment, but the idea of freedom will never die. A vision of Lorca interrupts her. He thanks her for immortalizing his spirit on stage, in the hearts of her students, and for the world.