Mexican revolutionary gets operatic treatment
Bilingual work created by artists from both sides of Rio Grande
The name Pancho Villa instantly conjures up the image of Francisco (Pancho) Villa, a.k.a. José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, with his giant sombrero, criss-crossed cartridge belts and trusty pistol by his side.
Depending on what side of the United States-Mexican border you hail from, his name also is associated with an outlaw or a revolutionary war hero.
In Pancho Villa From A Safe Distance, the new chamber opera appearing at the 2019 PuSh Festival, Austin-based composer Graham Reynolds and Mexico City librettists Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, bring to the stage the life of this general of the División del Norte in Chihuahua state during the Mexican Revolution. In a number of non-linear scenes taken from, or inspired by, Villa’s truly exceptional life, a picture of this uncompromising historic figure comes to light.
This bilingual work joins creative forces from both sides of the Rio Grande, joining Tejano and Mexican music to stories and scenes that paint a distinct picture of the complicated relationships between the U.S. and Mexico’s oft-contentious border communities, and beyond.
Commissioned by the heritage Ballroom Marfa, the project comes at a time when that relationship is the most strained it has been since the days when Villa rode the plains, and made occasional raids into the United States.
Along with Luisa Pardo, Gabino Rodriguez makes up the avant-garde artist collective Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, which is known for creating works promoting both cross-cultural understanding and challenging convention.
Graham Reynolds is a longtime fixture on the fertile Austin music scene, where his work in numerous projects ranges from orchestral works to wacky prog-rock celebrations of the music of Sun Ra. Working on Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance was a new kind of creative pursuit for both.
“Shawn Sides, the director, and I came upon Pancho Villa’s history in El Paso and when we decided upon that as the foundation of the piece, we knew that we needed to involved some Mexican, or Mexican-American, group as we couldn’t do it on our own,” Reynolds said.
“We had seen Lagartijas incredible show at Fusebox Festival in Austin the year before, so I asked its director to introduce us. It took several years to complete as it was the last part of this triptych of works commissioned by Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, Texas.”
Openly admitting that he is not someone who composes using Mexican-American musical motifs in his work, Reynolds set about having them “hover” around his composing. To arrive at the score that forms the backdrop of the show, he immersed himself in Mexican-American music all the time, while also listening to Shostakovich and others.
Austin scene aces in the large band include Grammy Award-winning guitarist, bandleader and producer Adrian Quesada. Mezzo-soprano Liz Cass and tenor Paul Sanchez sing the story of a man whose role in history is mythic.
“There is this grand hotel in El Paso right across the border with Juarez where people would come and sit on the roof to watch the actual battles of the Mexican Revolution take place in real time, real life, but from a safe distance,” said Rodriguez.
“So we agreed to use this term in the title to try to make clear the point of view where we are coming from to tell the story of Pancho Villa, which is so immediate and also so far away depending on where you are. His story is still at the core of the political struggle in Mexico, because it was constructed at the time of the revolution and is a permanent part of our mythology.”
Of course, besides the mythology built up around Villa, there is the real history of how the son of a sharecropper who become jack of all trades — even working as a
foreman on a U.S. railroad company — before taking up a life of crime as a member of a notorious border bandit until the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.
From there, his life reads through a succession of neardeath experiences as his homeland went through one bad regime after another and he endured imprisonment, being outlawed and more until his eventual retirement to a hacienda in Chihuahua in 1920.
On Friday, July 20, 1923, Villa was assassinated on a shopping trip.
“He embodies so many, many ideas in Mexico, such as the ideal of the macho Robin Hood,” said Rodriguez.
“We had never done an opera before, or written a libretto, but we certainly had a very documentary narrative in front of us. It was a pretty magnificent process, writing things and sending them to Graham, and him sending them back with notes such as ”there is no way you can sing this, try again.""
Reynolds says that the show arrives at a very appropriate time for cross-border dialogue and creative expression.
“The border is so incredibly fluid and so is the history that went down, which is why Lagartijas took actual writing from the time in newspapers, letters and such, to demonstrate it,” said Reynolds.
“What you get isn’t a timeline, or a straight narrative, but a collage of scenes from (Villa’s) life and times. You get a sense of him, how the border felt and that revolutionary time.”