AS Scottish Opera opens its production of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar – a reflection on the life, work and death of the great Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca – it occurs to me that Scotland has not been kind to Lorca in recent decades.
In 2006, director Jeremy Raison mangled the great play of forbidden love Blood Wedding in an unforgettably dreadful production for Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre.
Writer Rona Munro and director John Tiffany’s staging of The House Of Bernarda Alba for the National Theatre of Scotland in 2009 (which reset the play to the contemporary Glasgow gangland) was a painful disaster. And the less said about adapter David Ireland’s soap opera-style version of Blood Wedding (for Dundee Rep and Graeae theatre company) in 2015, the better.
A tremendous debt of gratitude is due, therefore, to Brazilian director Deborah Colker for restoring the spirit of duende – flamenco culture’s ecstatic expression of life, sexuality and mortality – to Lorca on the Scottish stage. Scottish Opera (and the numerous co-producers of Ainadamar, including The Metropolitan Opera of New York) can be duly proud.
From the very outset – when a great bull is projected onto a bullring constructed of hundreds of versatile chords and an impressive, statuesque flamenco dancer takes his place centre stage – one senses that the production we are about to experience will be something special.
Golijov’s flamenco trumpets soar above the stage as the chorus sings of Mariana Pineda (Granada’s revolutionary martyr, who was immortalised by Lorca).
Thus is the scene set for an opera comprised of totemic episodes from the artistic life of Lorca (played with wonderful sympathy by the American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey) and Margarita Xirgu, the actor-director who was Lorca’s great collaborator and champion (performed with a truly Spanish passion by the Australian soprano Lauren Fagan).
There is, in both the music and the staging, a terrible premonitory atmosphere around the figure of Lorca (who was murdered by the fascist Falange in 1936, in the early days of the Spanish Civil War, on account of his socialism and his homosexuality).
That is joined to the energy of artistic creation (which is represented, not only by Lorca and Xirgu, but also Xirgu’s student, Nuria, who is sung with spellbinding hope and defiance by Colombian soprano Julieth Lozano).
The unmistakable passion and beauty of flamenco song seem almost wasted upon the character of the fascist officer Ruiz Alonso. However, if there is a paradox, it is resolved brilliantly by Alfredo Tejada, the acclaimed flamenco singer, who renders Lorca’s pursuer as a desperate and obsessive fanatic, a red-baiter and a homophobe.
Colker’s production is visually spectacular in every aspect (from the sets and costumes to the glorious, constant movement and dance, and the extraordinary projections).
Boasting a score that blends opera and flamenco into an utterly compelling, dramatic whole, it is a resonating evocation both of the artistic spirit of Lorca and Xirgu, and the appalling consequences of the victory in Spain of Franco’s fascist death cult.
At Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, November 8, 10 & 12: scottishopera.org.uk
