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August 03, 2005
Summer Opera: Ainadamar in Santa Fe
Sadly for me, I had to leave New Mexico before the big-time premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's one-act opera Ainadamar, revised for Santa Fe Opera after being performed at Tanglewood and by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Well, the premiere was Saturday night, and the big boys are starting to weigh in on it. Starting with the biggest of the big, Bernard Holland was there to review the opera (Haunted by the Deaths of Martyrs, a Century Apart, August 1) for the New York Times:
The dead and dying appear in layers, one layer bleeding into the other. Blended too is Spain's darker side, with its dignity and repressed violence, and that same soul transplanted to Latin America, now invested with the garish and the lugubrious. In Mr. Golijov's music, flamenco and its Phrygian melody blare through amplification; so too do Afro-Cuban pounding and delicate Caribbean dance rhythms. Like his fellow Argentinean Astor Piazzolla, Mr. Golijov does not harness popular music; he liberates it. The energy is freed from a simple dance band function and allowed to wander into modulating keys and new meters. This is "low art" arranged in sophisticated sentences. Some of the close-harmony singing might come from a Xavier Cougat movie. Mr. Golijov takes his brass fanfares from the bullring and his sentimental moods off any old record or sheet music he can find. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty.Now this may sound like hitting below the belt, pulling out that "low art" card, but compared to the savaging Golijov's opera received at its Tanglewood premiere, this is a rave. To give you an idea of how a full-force lunge for the vitals looks on paper, here are a few choice excerpts from Holland's colleague, Anthony Tommasini (New Operas Remember The Agony Of Lovers Left Behind, August 13, 2003), for the New York Times:
Given Mr. Golijov's high promise and enormous gifts, his one-act opera "Ainadamar" was a major disappointment. He has conceded in recent interviews that he was late in composing this 70-minute score and that it had the earmarks of a rush job. [...] Though dramatic events occur in the opera, the story itself is a recollection and lacks narrative tension. This would be no problem, if there were more tension in the music. In places you hear palpable evidence of Mr. Golijov's great skills: some duets for the older and younger Margarita in which ruminative vocal lines are enshrouded by hazy, luminous, bittersweet orchestra harmonies; some playful song-and-dance numbers for the women's chorus sung with an intentionally nasal Latin American twang. And there are brilliant episodes of taped music: when the sounds of gurgling water and galloping horses are terrifyingly merged, and when the rifle shots that take down García Lorca are turned into crazed rhythmic volleys.
But whole patches of the score sound like generic Latinized vamping. Over droning pedal tones, slinky minor-mode melodies in the strings or voices spin and turn, film-scorish music that makes a big deal out of prolonging the half-step dissonance before the melody resolves into the tonic pedal tone. And an early episode of percussion in which the players break into hand-clapping makes you think of the Copacabana band.
Mark Swed, Out of failure, a new victory (Los Angeles Times, August 2) Chris Shull, Revolutionary music: Harth-Bedoya conducts 'Ainadamar' on opening night (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, August 1): the conductor in Santa Fe, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, is music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Alex Ross, Deep Song: Ainadamar (The New Yorker, Sept. 1, 2003) |
Originally from ionarts, ReBlogged by jeff on Aug 3, 2005 at 12:02 AM
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