GRAND OPERA ON (AND OF) THE AMAZON

FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS is an opera of many superlatives: It’s the first Spanish-language work performed by the Metropolitan Opera in almost 100 years; and it’s the first Met opera composed by a Mexican composer. It’s also the first Spanish-language opera to be commissioned by major U.S. opera houses, jointly Houston Grand Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Seattle Opera. Its world premiere came in Houston on October 26, 1996. Since that time, Florencia en el Amazonas has been performed in Mexico City, Heidelberg, Germany, and by more than a dozen U.S. opera companies. 

Daughter Suz and I enjoyed the Met’s performance as part of its 2023-2024 Live in HD series. Here are tidbits about this opera as well as its related Amazoniana.

The Opera. As described in the Met’s 2023-2024 Live in HD and Radio Program Guide, “Florencia en el Amazonas is set largely aboard a river boat traveling through the Amazon rainforest.” Its title character is Florencia Grimaldi, an opera singer traveling incognito to a performance at the legendary theater in Manaus. But she’s also in search of her lover Cristóbal, a butterfly hunter who has vanished into the jungle.

Also aboard the steamboat El Dorado are Paula and Álvaro, an aging couple in need of revitalizing their marriage; Rosalba, a journalist profiling Grimaldi; the ship’s Capitán and his nephew Arcadio, the latter evolving into Rosalba’s love interest; and the ship’s mate Riolobo, who, Wikipedia notes, “functions as narrator, one of the characters, and the intermediary between reality and the mystical world of the river.”  

Magical Realism. Wikipedia says this opera composed by Daniel Catán “contains elements of magical realism in the style of Gabriel García Márquez and uses a libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain, one of his pupils. The characters are inspired by García Márquez, but the story is not drawn directly from any of his works.” 

Recounts the Met Guide, “As the composer, who died in 2011, once explained, ‘I thought of the marimba, its luscious wooden sounds and the way they would combine with flutes, clarinets, and harp. The sonorities of these instruments seemed to me to capture the sound of the river, the way it changes its timbre as it flows, transforming everything in its path.’ 

And so it is with the humans as well as the wildlife of this setting.

The River, Not Only the Boat and Passengers. Elizabeth Vincentelli writes in The New York Times, November 14, 2023, about Mary Zimmerman’s production: “ ‘Florencia’ is almost entirely set on the boat, and most productions, starting with Francesca Zambello’s premiere staging at Houston Grand Opera in 1996, have made the ship a scenic centerpiece. But Zimmerman turned her gaze outward. ‘I wanted to emphasize the natural world and the outdoors,’ she said. At the Met, the focus will be on what the passengers see during their journey rather than on their mode of transportation.”

Dancing Amazonian wildlife. Image from  wqxr.org.

This is exemplified by Ana Kuzmanić’s charming costumes for Amazonian fauna and Riccardo Hernández’s evolving set design evoking curvature of the river banks (and artfully containing the supertitles).

Rosalba senses the river’s ever-present piranah.  Image from Playbill.

The Real Manaus Opera House. Wikipedia notes, “Manaus was at the center of the Amazon region’s rubber boom during the late 19th century. For a time, it was ‘one of the gaudiest cities of the world.’ Historian Robin Furneaux wrote of this period, ‘No extravagance, however absurd, deterred’ the rubber barons. ‘If one rubber baron bought a vast yacht, another would install a tame lion in his villa, and a third would water his horse on champagne.” The city built a grand opera house, with vast domes and gilded balconies, and using marble, glass, and crystal, from around Europe.” 

The Opera House is in the background as El Dorado reaches Manaus. Image by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times from “An Opera’s Riverboat Journey Brings the Rainforest Onboard.”

The city’s rubber boom dissipated once culprits stole rubber plants for Far East plantations. But even before that, the opera house had its ups and downs. Wikipedia recounts,  “In one season, half the members of one visiting opera troupe died of yellow fever. The opera house, called the Teatro Amazonas, was effectively closed for most of the 20th Century…. After a gap of almost 90 years, it reopened to produce live opera in 1997 and is now attracting performers from all over the world.” 

What’s more, Manaus and its Opera House have provided aspirational destinations for the El Dorado travelers of Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024