Ainadamar Tickets

Metropolitan Opera, New York, USA

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Important Info

Type: Opera

City: New York, USA

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

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Cast

Performers

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Overview

Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Grammy Award–winning first opera dramatizes the life and work of poet-playwright Federico García Lorca, who was assassinated by Fascist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War for his socialist politics and homosexuality.

His story emerges through the memories of Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu, Lorca’s muse—sopranos Angel Blue and Gabriella Reyes—who reminisces to her student Nuria, portrayed by soprano Elena Villalón. Lorca himself makes a dreamlike appearance, sung as a trouser role by mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, and flamenco singer Alfredo Tejada completes the principal cast as the Falangist politician Ramón Ruiz Alonso, who arranged Lorca’s execution. Combining features of both an opera and a passion, Ainadamar, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya in his Met debut, crackles with the energy and rhythms of flamenco and rumba, as well as the violent backdrop of civil war, all of which springs forth on the Met stage in a vivid company-debut production by Brazilian director and choreographer Deborah Colker, renowned for her work with Cirque du Soleil.

Production a gift of the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Endowment Fund, and the Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation, in memory of Richard Gaddes

Ainadamar is part of the Neubauer Family Foundation New Works Initiative

A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Ventures, Scottish Opera, Detroit Opera, and Welsh National Opera

History

Premiere of this production: 10 August 2003, Tanglewood

Ainadamar or An Opera in Three Images (Arabic for 'Fountain of Tears') is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto was written by American playwright David Henry Hwang and translated from English into Spanish by the composer. It premiered in Tanglewood on 10 August 2003 and, after major revisions, the new version was given its premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on 30 July 2005.

Synopsis

Xirgu prepares to go onstage at the Solís Theatre in Montevideo. She has spent her career portraying Mariana Pineda in Lorca's play of the same name. Xirgu fled to Uruguay in the unrest before the Spanish Civil War. Lorca refused to leave and was assassinated by the Falange in 1936. Like his muse Pineda, Lorca died young. Xirgu has been playing Pineda on stage for almost forty years.

Xirgu tells her student Nuria of her friendship with Lorca. The poet emerges from the past to sing of the pure love Pineda represented to him even as a child, when he would see her statue in Granada. Xirgu blames herself for Lorca's fate, since she could not convince the young man to abandon Spain. In Xirgu's memories, she dreams of freedom in Cuba, but Lorca insists that he must witness suffering and memorialize the dead. Falangist officer Ruiz Alonso arrests Lorca, accusing him of conspiracy. Lorca to the Fountain of Tears alongside a teacher and a bullfighter. After the Falangist guard José Tripaldi takes their confessions, the three prisoners are shot.

In the present, an exhausted Xirgu insists she must tell Pineda's story one more time. A vision of Lorca interrupts her. He thanks her for immortalising his spirit on stage and in the hearts of her students as she dies.

Venue Info

Metropolitan Opera - New York
30 Lincoln Center

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The Metropolitan Opera is the largest classical music theatre in North America. It presents about 27 different operas each year from late September through May. As of 2018, the company's current music director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

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