Newspaper Article

Haunted by the Deaths of Martyrs, a Century Apart

Holland, Bernard

2005

Overview

''Ainadamar,'' Osvaldo Golijov's brief opera at the Santa Fe Opera Saturday evening, remembers the deaths of these two people but confesses its fascination with death in general. [Mariana Pineda] was garroted in 1831 by counterrevolutionaries not unlike the fascists who shot [Federico Garcia Lorca] in 1936. In the opera, their stories are told by way of Uruguay, where the playwright's erstwhile leading lady Margarita Xirgu is long exiled and approaching death in 1969. ''Ainadamar'' refers to Granada's Fountain of Tears, where Garcia Lorca was killed. Peter Sellars directs it as a ceremony of mourning, with women in black acting out mourners ritual choreography. Mr. Sellars casts a keen eye on the look of violent death: re-enacting twitching last moments or slumping firing squad victims whose shootings are backed up and repeated as in a tape loop. The cast is small and largely female: Dawn Upshaw as Xirgu, Kelly O'Connor as Garcia Lorca, and Jessica Rivera as the younger Xirgu. Ruiz Alonso and Jose Tripaldi were the soldiers/executioners. Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducted well.

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: Ainadamar / Opera