Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was shot dead just one month into the Spanish civil war in 1936. His martyrdom is central to Osvaldo Golijov’s single-act opera Ainadamar, named for the place just outside Granada – also known as the Fountain of Tears – where Lorca and later thousands of others were murdered. And the work has contributed further to the mythologising of the man now recognised as one of Spain’s great writers. It is curious then to consider that it was only in a 2003 revision of the piece, two years after its premiere, that librettist David Henry Hwang and Golijov included Lorca as an actual character.
Welsh National Opera’s staging – a co-production with Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, Detroit Opera and the Metropolitan Opera – is set in a circular space echoing that of Ainadamar’s fountain, and has both the feel of a pilgrimage and a passion play, evocative but laced with violence and the fierce energy of authenticity.
