Dreamy Magic at the Dot Chandler

Opera Review:  El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego. 

Michael Sedano

foto: L.A. Opera

I was mildly disappointed not attending the L.A. Opera’s production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni last month. Happily, I can make up for the lapse with another don Juan, the notorious mujeriego pot-bellied Diego Rivera in the Los Angeles Opera’s El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego.
 
A far cry from Mozart,Grammy Award-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz put together an experience worthy of any other Grand Opera on the nation’s premiere stage for opera, but with the taste of raza and lo nuestro. Gente paid attention and throng to the production. I would not be surprised to see the run extended prior to moving up North to The City.
 
Credit for the look and feel of the stage experience goes to Stage director Lorena Maza, scenic designer Jorge Ballina, costume designer Eloise Kazan and lighting designer Victor Zapatero, all of whom son chilangos. The choreographer is Ruby Tagle, also based in Mexico City. Jeremy Frank is the chorus director.
 
Frida.
 
Diego.
 
Audiences. 
 
Especially in L.A., say the magic words “Frida” “Diego” and with the snap of credit card plastic on the counter, gente fill the plaza of the Music Center rubbing shoulders with delighted opera regulars. Those People welcome Diversity to dispel the fusty fuddy-duddy reputation of opera-goers and Grand Opera.
 
Órale, El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego is Grand Opera, and our gente flocked to the magic. 
 
Welcome to the mainstream, raza. El Último Sueño marks all manner of innovative and unique highpoints in United Statesian High Culture. The best part, this becomes the first time many people have ventured this far into the cultural heart of Anglo L.A. Aquí estamos que no?
 
Programmers at the Music Center get it right. Tickets start at fourteen bolas. If you ride the train you can walk there. 
 
At the front doors, there’s a large gold frame for selfies with a muted blue lienzo flat emblazoned with trademark logoi. People line up fifty deep for a few seconds enchanted, framed inside el marco de oro. 

foto: Irene Hernandez
L, Irene Hernandez, R, Helen Suquett- Krolik

The selfie set evokes the most magical vignette in the magical production  inside:  identical gold frames enfold tableaux vivants quoting classic Kahlo paintings. Only after seeing the scene will the selfie-taker realize the fulness of their interaction with the experience.

 
Sueño is sung entirely in Spanish, with English supertitles. Hispanoparlantes filling a preponderance of the 3200 seats in the Dorothy Chandler auditorium relied upon the Spanish supertitles to decipher operatic phrasing--recitative-- that tends to break single syllable words into five- or six-syllable articulations and listeners go "no one talks like that", and "what is she saying?"

The musical score provides an aural tapestry that seems fit to the emotions of the moment. No one left the theatre humming the catchy tunes because there aren't any. I was expecting a "La Llorona" melody somewhere in the "folklore-inspired score" but I recognized nothing evocative of stuff I know. Maybe Carlos Chavez devotées would recognize the notes, but it doesn't have to sound familiar to be effective. The music works and drives the action onward.
 
Úlitmo Sueño is easily the first purely cultura Mexicana libretto to play on Bunker Hill. The Opera association's literature proclaims the All-Mexican creative staff and have bent over backwards to make this an L.A. event wrapped in Mexicanismo.
 
It's an opportunity raza really should jump into with both jobs and a loan from the readycash place. Even at fourteen bucks a seat, attending the opera is not for the faint of heart. The lobby bars take a C-note for four drinks.
 
Eat before you go. But go. Mejor, save your bucks and make an event of going to the Opera, with friends. "Grand" means something, so be grande and enjoy the opera a todo dar.
 
There's magic on that huge stage. Mictlán. Real Life. An orchestra directed by Lina González-Granados provides the symphonic musica. Voices include a sizeable chorus, leads include Soprano, Mezzo-soprano, Countertenor, Baritone. No amplification, it's real Opera.
 
Gente generally don't know all the technical stuff about the opera nor this one in particular. We're here to experience.
 

foto:L.A. Opera 

Color is the first sense the stage engages. Scenic designer Jorge Ballina keeps everything orange and warm tan colors. Warm diffused light softens every garment and line and angle in sight. The characters are dead; here is Mictlán and the setting for the first two acts. 

 
The scene offers puro magic. And more magic. Then more than enough magic so that people at intermission hope the second half will have a faster pace.
 
Still, it's imaginative and a bit rasquache how the ranks of wooden Cempasúchil winch into the air above the singers. The real world is up there with the Marigolds, Mictlan is on stage, beneath the garlands and graves. In fact, I was delighted by numerous old-fashion stage effects that eschew technology for the make-do of elegant rasquachismo like a gauze curtain and light effects.

 
The audience doesn't applaud at all the cool places like a "regular" audience would. Ni modo. The audience as a single entity are fully engaged in the slowly unfolding drama and iconography. At the end, applause and a few chifles sound the genuine appreciation of this audience. I whistled.
 
As in most operas, story doesn't matter so much as sensation, emotion, and for Sueño in particular, hero-worship. (Note: references to fat-bellied Diego aren't bashing but allusions to the libretto). Frida wears her floral headdress and in the audience, hundreds of women pay tribute to Frida by wearing floral headdresses and Puebla embroidered textiles.
 
It's a beautiful thing going on like never before at the Dot Chandler.

Michael Sedano photobombs two visitors after the matinee. Attending the performance infuses the audience with joy and a giddiness born of sharing a magical experience.

 
Plotted after Orpheus and other adventurers into the underworld, Frida returns to earth to assuage Diego's desperate longing. There's a condition, a catch: Frida can only observe, not touch. To touch is to regain the pain of being crushed by a streetcar and confined to a stiff corset much of her days.
 
She touches. Diego probably dies--Frida kills Diego--with that touch. Frida has abandoned eternal peace to gain a momentary reunion with the Love of her Life knowing she will rediscover physical agony. 
 
Frida even sings how loving Diego is more painful than being crushed by that streetcar. The audience Saturday matinee gives off a collective gasp of empathy at the brutality of the thought, and Frida's nobility comes through, her dalliances purified with her sacrifice for Love and her man.
 
That's why Story doesn't matter. You're not supposed to ask the questions that strike you while enjoying an after-Opera dinner with friends. What did Frida do to deserve having to live with agony again? Does Diego have a right to ask Frida to abandon liberation from pain to serve his selfish longing? There's nothing in it for Frida. She's following a patriarchal imperative but we're not supposed to notice. 
 
That's OK, it's only a pinche opera. El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego offers spectacle unavailable from any other experience. Going to the Opera like the rich people is an engaging social event that goes better with compañeros in the next seat. Our gente belong in places like Music Center Hill and productions like this will fill seats when we feel welcome. When we are made to feel welcome. This time around, órale, L.A. Opera, te aventáste.
 
Note:
El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego has  only six Los Angeles performances, 7:30 or 2:00 p.m., through December 9 via this link to L.A. Opera.