There may never be a more potent opera subject than Frida Kahlo and her volcanic relationship with Diego Rivera. Frida, Robert Xavier Rodriguez’ 1991 opera about the iconic Mexican visual artists, is making an overdue New Mexico premiere, thanks to Albuquerque’s Opera Southwest, with three performances at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Throughout their romance, marriage, divorce, and remarriage, Kahlo and Rivera raised the concept of creative friction to new heights. While they were each creating masterful art — she with 55 unsparingly honest self-portraits that chronicled every aspect of her life and he with murals that celebrated Mexican culture, Marxism, and the dignity of the working man — their life together was full of passion, fights, jealousies, forgiveness, substance abuse, and multiple miscarriages. Rivera had affairs with many other women, including Frida’s beloved younger sister Cristina; she had affairs with other men, including famed Marxist Leon Trotsky, as well as with several women.
Add in the opportunity to make use of their striking visual art and a hit opera seems almost a certainty. At least it seemed that way to Hilary Blecher, who developed the concept and co-wrote the text with Latina playwright Migdalia Cruz. Texas-born composer Rodriguez came on board soon afterward and their Frida premiered to glowing reviews in April 1991 at Philadelphia’s American Music Theater Festival.
The New York Times’ John Rockwell called it “a fascinating, magnetically engrossing evening,” and went on to say, “Rodriguez’s music is genuinely original and genuinely accessible, a neat combination not that often achieved. ... The depiction of key incidents takes on aspects of Latin magical realism that novelists and painters have appropriated but that Kahlo actually lived, so intertwined was her art and her surrealistically artful life.”
For Eliza Bonet, whose parents are Puerto Rican and Cuban, performing the title role is a rare opportunity. “She’s a Latina icon, and I don’t get to portray people like her very often,” she says. “She painted things that were difficult to discuss, much less see in vivid art, and she stood for many things that I adhere to now. I’m very much a freedom-oriented, make-my-own-decisions woman.”
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, (1941); photo by Nickolas Muray
Bonet admits that there’s an intimidation factor in portraying Kahlo, thanks to the Fridamania that surrounds her. “But I don’t focus on the fear,” she says. “Instead, I try to focus on who she was, what she did, and the culture from which she drew all her strength. Frida threw every aspect of herself into her craft, and I’ll try to take the same approach here.”
The mezzo-soprano knows the opera well, having sung two of its smaller roles in Atlanta Opera’s 2019 staging. “I sat there thinking, I really want to do Frida, I really want to do Frida,” she says with a laugh. “It’s like being in Carmen while you’re singing Mercédès [Carmen’s mezzo-soprano friend]. I’ve done that too.”
It’s a compact cast, with Bonet partnered by Peruvian native José Sacín as Rivera. All the other named roles are played by a soprano/alto/tenor/baritone quartet, portraying three power couples — Henry and Clara Ford, Nelson and Mary Rockefeller, and Leon and Natalia Trotsky — along with Frida’s sister, her father, and film star Edward G. Robinson.
A coronavirus-related schedule change means there are three performances on three consecutive days, a very unusual situation for opera singers. For Bonet, that means building up her stamina by singing in full voice as much as possible during the rehearsals. “Frida is never not onstage,” she says. “She only leaves for costume changes. Fortunately, it’s right in the sweet spot for my voice.”
Since its premiere, Frida has since become one of the most popular of contemporary American operas, with 13 different productions in this country since 2000, as well as several abroad. Locally, it’s the fourth installment in Opera Southwest’s Hispanic Opera Series, which launched in 2018 with Bless Me, Ultima by composer Héctor Armienta, who also adapted Rudolfo Anaya’s celebrated novel for the text. Astor Piazzolla’s tango opera María de Buenos Aires followed in 2019, and Daniel Catán’s Il Postino was staged in 2020.
“This series has elegantly combined Opera Southwest’s mission of promoting and preserving opera with the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s mission to preserve and promote Hispanic culture,” says Tony Zancanella, the opera group’s executive director. “New Mexico audiences have been tremendously receptive to these operas, and they are routinely among our best-selling performances.”
The series has also filled a disturbing gap in local programming. In its 64 seasons, the Santa Fe Opera has staged a total of three operas by Hispanic composers, and just one (Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar in 2005) since 1975. Meanwhile, for Opera Southwest, a fifth contemporary Hispanic piece is on the horizon. Its 2022-2023 season opens this fall with Héctor Armienta’s Zorro, a co-commissioned premiere with Fort Worth Opera.
In his program notes, Rodríguez describes Frida as being “in the Gershwin, Sondheim, and Kurt Weill tradition of dissolving the barriers and extending the common ground between opera and musical theater.” In more specific terms that means a score blending Mexican mariachi songs, narrative ballads, and folk dances with aspects of ragtime, vaudeville, and 1930’s jazz.
Rodriguez’ chamber orchestra often comments on the action and characters, sometimes with quotations from well-known sources, such as Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, for the arrival of Leon Trotsky, and Tristan und Isolde, which connects Richard Wagner’s antisemitism with Henry Ford’s. Vocal ensembles are plentiful, and the essence of Frida’s personality is characterized by an ingenious rhythmic profile — she often sings in three-quarter time against everyone else’s duple meters. “Frida sings as she lived,” the composer says, “against the tide from the very first note.”
