Golijov’s Ainadamar: Opera or Musical Pastiche

The following comments on Ainadamar were written after a visit to the Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 2005.

There must be a running debate in musical circles, particularly with audiences and music critics, as to whether Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” is a theatrical musical piece or an opera. The performance on August 14th, 2005 by the Santa Fe Opera, whose refurbished opera house is situated in the stoic, primeval mountains of Northern New Mexico, certainly did not settle the argument.

Ainadamar is based on the life of poet and dramatist, Federico Garcia Lorca and his personal relationship with Spanish actor, Margarita Xirgu who was the writer’s protagonist in a number of his plays. Their relationship began with Lorca’s first critical success, Mariana Pineda, in which Margarita portrayed a 19th Century political martyr who would rather die than reveal the names of her lover and his compatriots in their fight for freedom. The theme of woman as sacrificial lamb was one that Lorca succumbed to throughout his dramatic works.

Golijov and his librettist, David Henry Hwang, concentrate mostly on Lorca’s personal tragedy, emphasizing the poet’s execution at the age of 38 by the Falangists who fought against the Republican forces in Spain’s mean-spirited and bloody Civil War which ended up with Caudillo Franco’s long dictatorship.

Where Golijov’s work seems to be mostly an opera, meaning where music, text and emotional execution fuse into a lyrical experience, doesn’t’ show up until the middle of Ainadamar’s seventy-five minute playing time.

It is in this sinewy melodic section of Ainadamar, so named for the fountain of tears set close to the spot of Lorca’s execution, where the music both hypnotic and sensual, reaches out with such intense poignancy, it captures the heart breaking and tragic inevitability of Lorca’s death. Here, Golijov’s lyricism rises to the ethereal level of opera and touches it other worldliness which is essential in making opera. And this quality afforded both, mezzo soprano, Kelly O’Connor, as Lorca and Dawn Upshaw, the lead soprano as Xirgu to express their vocal talents to the fullest. Before this moment their singing lacked the assertive and impassioned qualities necessary to show Lorca’s internal turmoil, primarily due to Golijov’s uninspiring musical ideas.

The other sections of Ainadamar seem only to reach the level of current theatrical trends, showing an eclectic composite of Latin rhythms, rumbas, flamenco and Middle Eastern strains, although the latter are beautifully orchestrated, all giving us the sensation of having heard it before. The fresh beauty of the middle section is just not there.

Director Peter Sellars, brought in to excite the piece, kept it going most times matching action to music. One of Sellars ideas was to put Lorca’s executioner in U.S. Army fatigues which lessened the dramatic effect of Lorca’s death. Dressing the poet’s murderer in the typical Spanish street garb of the 1930’s would have better highlighted the political hatred the Falangists felt for those countrymen who stood for personal freedom in the arts, music and governmental acceptance for all. Lorca’s threat as artistic leader of those who espoused this liberal philosophy, many of whom were suspected of being homosexual, would have been better served. And another idea, a repetitious chorographic move the chorus of eight women performed by raising their arms in gothic pose every time they heard the word “campanas,” indicating the tolling bells that announced Lorca’s death, became especially tedious.

Both Sellars and Golijov gave the impression that this production presented Ainadamar as an accomplished and completed opera, its virtues sufficient reason for it to enter the operatic repertoire when in reality the work reveals a number of uncertain and desultory aspects in too many of its parts that prevents the work from achieving that goal at present. make this performance a wholly dramatic and satisfying experience!