DIRECTOR’S NOTE A FOUNTAIN OF TEARS AND REFLECTION

Lawrence Edelson, Artistic Director, Moores Opera Center

“The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink – and in drinking understand themselves.”

- Federico García Lorca

Ainadamar reimagines the life of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, whose politics and homosexuality led to his brutal execution during the Spanish Civil War. Composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Grammy-award winning score grabs you from the very first beat – weaving together musical influences from around the world. Golijov grew up in Argentina, the son of Eastern European Jews. Ainadamar is deeply saturated in Spanish music – especially Flamenco – but throughout we hear rival influences, drawing on both sacred and folk music, as well as dynamic use of electronic samples – including the sounds of water, horse hooves, and gunshots – to create a unique sonic world that transports us into the fragments of memory that are weaved together to tell a deeply meaningful story.

Through the opera, two themes emerge: the birth of the legacy of Lorca; and the passing of an artistic legacy from one generation to the next. Ainadamar has features of both an opera and a passion play as it examines the powerful symbolic role Lorca has embodied since his death. The connections with the Baroque passion also occur structurally, as the work evolves as a series of arias, recurring choruses and dances. The first production of Ainadamar was presented in concert, and the piece continues to be performed both in concert and more fully staged with lavish sets and costumes –often with extensive use of Flamenco dance. As we were preparing this production for the Moores Opera Center, I found myself thinking about how our students could best bring librettist David Henry Hwang and Golijov’s story telling to life.

Ainadamar is told in reverse, in a series of flashbacks. The opera explores the tension of time, the evolution of memory, and how our bodies function as temporary vessels through which we pass on our lived experience. As a former dancer, my work as a director often explores the intersection of physical, musical and textual storytelling. Singers are not dancers, but their bodies are still the vessels through which stories are told. So often, young singers focus just on their voices – but the entire body is the vehicle for sharing a story. How can we tell this story dynamically with our bodies, the most versatile of instruments? How does stillness impact us? Movement? Tempo? Dynamic? Gesture? How do we play with time in an opera that plays with time?

These are the questions we’ve been exploring together in our production of Ainadamar. I am incredibly proud of how committed our two casts – including both undergraduate and graduate students - have been while exploring this kind of storytelling. I am also incredibly grateful to have Maestro Steven Osgood with us as our guest conductor for this production. Steve and I have had the opportunity to collaborate on a number of contemporary opera projects in the past, and as we close our Moores Opera Center season with Ainadamar, I hope that all involved will have found something special in this experience that they can savor as they continue to pursue their passion for opera.

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The opera is told through the actress Margarita Xirgu’s memories in a series of flashbacks as the past invades the present. Emerging from darkness, the mythic world of Federico García Lorca comes into being.

FIRST IMAGE: MARIANA

Teatro Solís, Montevideo, Uruguay, 1969. 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 of Lorca’s play. She tries to convey to her young student, Nuria, the passion and the hope of her generation that gave birth to the Spanish Republic. She flashes back to her first meeting with Lorca in a bar in Madrid, where he describes his play to her for the first time. He tells her that the freedom in his play is not only political, and sings a rhapsodic aria inspired by the sight of the statue of Mariana Pineda that he saw as a child in Granada. Mariana was martyred in 1831 for sewing a revolutionary flag and refusing to reveal the names of the revolutionary leaders. Margarita reflects on the parallel fates of Mariana and Federico. The flashback is interrupted by the Falangist Ramon Ruiz Alonso, who arrested and executed Lorca in August 1936, broadcasting over the state radio that his party will stamp out the beginnings of the revolution.

SECOND IMAGE: FEDERICO

The ballad of Mariana Pineda sounds again, taking Margarita back to the summer of 1936, the last time she saw Federico. The Spanish Civil War has begun. Xirgu pleads with Lorca to join her and her theatre 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. No one knows the specific details of Lorca’s murder. Margarita has a vision of his final hour: Ruiz Alonso arresting Lorca in Granada and leading him to Ainadamar, the fountain of tears, together with a bullfighter and a teacher. The three of them are made to confess their sins. Then they are shot. 2137 people were murdered in Granada between July 1936 and March 1939. The death of Lorca was an early signal to the world.

THIRD IMAGE: MARGARITA

The ballad of Mariana Pineda sounds again as the play is about to begin once more - the story retold for the generation of Margarita’s Latin American students. Margarita 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. As Margarita dies, she offers her life to Mariana Pineda’s final lines: “I am freedom.” She passes on the legacy of Lorca to Nuria, her students, and the generations that follow. She sings “I am the source, the fountain from which you drink.”