NO-ONE can accuse Scottish Opera of lacking artistic ambition.
The company’s latest project – a staging of Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s 2003 opera Ainadamar (an Andalusian term taken from the Arabic “Ayn al-Dam”, meaning “The Fountain of Tears”) – marks the opera debut of the internationally acclaimed Brazilian choreographer and stage director Deborah Colker.
The opera reimagines the life of the great Andalusian poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by the fascist forces of General Franco on account of his left-wing politics and his homosexuality. No work about Lorca can be complete without a sense of duende, the Andalusian concept (central to the music and dance of flamenco) that encapsulates a heightened and simultaneous sense of life, desire and mortality.
By placing the opera in the hands of Colker, Scottish Opera and its co-producers (Opera Ventures, Detroit Opera, The Metropolitan Opera of New York and Welsh National Opera) are clearly seeking to emphasise the potential for visual spectacle – not least through movement and dance – that is inherent in Golijov’s piece. After all, the director – who has led her own Rio de Janeiro-based dance company, Companhia de Dança Deborah Colker, for four decades – is internationally renowned for choreographing and directing such visually impressive productions as Ovo, the 2009 show by the famous Montreal-based company Cirque du Soleil, and the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics in 2016.
When I catch up with Colker during rehearsals for Ainadamar, she tells me that she loves the fact that Golijov’s piece – although it is typically described as his “Lorca opera” – is told from a female perspective. “The most important character is Margarita Xirgu,” says the choreographer, in reference to the famous Catalan actor who was Lorca’s close friend and muse.
The female perspective of the production is further emphasised by the fact that, opposite the character of Xirgu (who is performed by the Australian soprano Lauren Fagan), Lorca himself is played by the American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey.
Everything depicted in the opera, Colker explains, comes through Xirgu’s experiences with Lorca and from her imagination. “I think that the life of Xirgu is totally related to Lorca’s work,” the choreographer continues.
What the Brazilian director says is incontestable. At Teatro Espanol in Barcelona – where she was both artistic director and actor – Xirgu produced and performed in the premieres of numerous Lorca plays, most notably Mariana Pineda (1927) and Yerma (1934).
Xirgu was touring in Latin America when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. Lorca was murdered early in the war (on August 19, 1936). Xirgu remained in exile in Argentina and Uruguay for the rest of her life.
The actor-director made the film of Lorca’s great play Blood Wedding in 1939 and, in 1945, she staged in Buenos Aries the world premiere of, arguably the Andalusian writer’s magnum opus, The House of Bernarda Alba.
“When [Lorca and Xirgu] met, I think Margarita decided, ‘this is my life’,” Colker tells me. Xirgu was certain, the choreographer believes, that it was her destiny, “to play Mariana Pineda [the 19th-century liberal martyr from Lorca’s home city of Granada], to follow Lorca’s work, to make the work known internationally, and so on... I think Lorca is known in our world because of what Xirgu did together with him and after his death.”
The director is enjoying the opera’s commitment to the artistic and political liberty that is at the heart of Lorca’s work. She also likes the fact that Golijov’s piece does not tie her down, as director, to a linear, chronological narrative (the opera “goes back, then forward again”, Colker comments).
It is fitting that the Brazilian director is making her opera debut with a piece that has an unconventional structure. As the performers have discovered in rehearsals, Colker is not a conventional opera director.
Colker explains that she is “bringing movement” to the opera. “It is very important to me that the audience will not say to itself, ‘oh, these are the dancers, these are the opera singers.’ I want all of them to move, to sing and to act.”
She has been encouraging the singers to imbue their characters with a Latin mode of communication. “People from Spain speak using their hands,” she says. “It is important to use the body with intensity and expressivity.”
I can’t help but wonder if the singers have found Colker’s way of working, particularly in relation to movement, to be markedly different from their typical experience of making opera. “Yes, definitely,” the director says, with a laugh.
“I remember, one day, Samantha [Hankey] told me, ‘Deborah, usually the directors tell us not to move, and you’re asking me to do the opposite’.”
Ainadamar is a work that expresses, not only what Colker calls the “love relationship” between Xirgu and Lorca, but also the cultural and political tumult that surrounded them. The culture of flamenco is expressed through the opera, as, indeed, is the symbolism of the bullfighter.
Of course, no narrative about Lorca, no matter how unconventional, can ignore the brutality of the fascism that took the poet’s life at the age of just 38. This is a subject that feels very immediate for Colker, as a Brazilian.
Today’s crucial second round in her country’s presidential election is a run-off between the veteran left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who is often nicknamed “Tropical Trump”. “Bolsonaro is a fascist,” says the director.
“He’s a monster. I’m totally nervous about this election, because maybe he can win again, which would be a disaster... He’s the worst. He’s worse than Trump.”
Colker speaks about the precarious condition of Brazilian democracy – and with it human rights and the ecology of her country’s rainforests – with the same kind of passion as she talks about directing Golijov’s opera.
She is an artist who values her cultural commitment and her political humanism equally. Very much like Xirgu and Lorca themselves.
Ainadamar plays the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, November 2 and 5; and Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, November 8, 10 and 12: scottishopera.org.uk
