Mariachi meets opera (again) in ‘El Milagro del Recuerdo’
Cast members insist it’s possible to enjoy “El Milagro del Recuerdo/The Miracle of Remembering” without first seeing “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna.” Still, a little extra context never hurt anyone.
First produced by Houston Grand Opera in 2010, “Cruzar” instantly created the subgenre of “mariachi opera” by grafting the passionate traditional Mexican music onto an operatic setting. The sheer novelty may have grabbed headlines, but ultimately it was the story — Mexican patriarch Laurentino reckons with the consequences of his long-ago emigration to the U.S., a journey
“Cruzar” contrasts with the life cycle of the monarch butterfly — that connected with audiences.
“We’re not talking about kings and queens and the Evil Man; we’re talking about everyday people that we might know,” says Cecilia Duarte, the Houston-based mezzo-soprano who plays the role of Renata in both operas. “With ‘Cruzar,’ people would come to us and say, ‘You just told my story’ or, ‘That was my grandfather’ or, ‘I grew up like that.’ ”
“Cruzar” remains a popular production across the Southwest and beyond, including HGO revivals in 2013 and last year. In
France, a group of people from Kenya told Duarte’s fellow cast member Vanessa Alonzo how much they identified with the story.
“Everywhere we go, people relate to something,” Duarte adds. “We hope that ‘Milagro’ has the same effect.”
Onstage at the Wortham Center from Thursday through December 22, “Milagro” is written and directed by Leonard Foglia, who held the same positions for “Cruzar” and 2015’s “El Pasado Nunca
Se Termina.” (All three operas utilize mariachi music, but “Pasado” follows a different storyline.)
The music for “Cruzar” and “Pasado” was written by Jose “Pepe” Ramirez, legendary leader of the group Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán. After the so-called “Mozart of Mariachi” passed away in 2016, HGO asked his son Javier — who spent his childhood accompanying his father to recording studios and concerts, and started his own mariachi career at age 17 — to write the score for “Milagro.”
“For me, it is a privilege that HGO has given me the opportunity to continue with the legacy that (my father) started with ‘Cruzar,’ ” says Javier via email (and in Spanish). “From the first day I started with this project, I spoke with my father (although he had already passed away) and told him that this was going to be done with all my heart, so that mariachi music (will) keep touching hearts all over the world.
“My father was a genius in mariachi music and maybe I never became as big as he was, but ‘El Milagro del Recuerdo’ is a musical tribute dedicated to him,” he adds. “Thanks, Dad.”
The new opera rewinds the story to the early ’60s. On Christmas Eve, Laurentino and his friend Chucho have returned to their southwestern Mexican village to spend the holiday with their families after a year or two in the U.S. as the seasonal agricultural workers known as braceros.
Their return puts their spouses at a crossroads: Renata, Laurentino’s wife, begs him to stay in Michoacán; Chucho, meanwhile, urges his wife, Lupita, to move to America with him.
“People leave their home all the time to work elsewhere, and send money back; that still happens today,” says Alonzo, who plays Lupita. “It’s still a topic that’s very alive. I love that we touch people’s hearts that are living it.”
Neither are the questions the two couples face limited to the opera’s specific time and place, Duarte notes.
“It’s like anybody could go through any of those situations at some point in their lives,” she says. “When we were doing the workshop, the (conflict) scenes between Renata and Laurentino, I remember being choked up because I have said some of that stuff to my husband, or maybe
I’ve heard those lines from him.”
If Laurentino and Chucho’s return isn’t awkward enough, it happens while their wives and kids are busy preparing for their village’s annual pastorela, a Christmas pageant that retells the traditional nativity story while allowing for plenty of artistic license.
Re-creating a onstage also allows “Milagro” to celebrate several Mexican holiday traditions — tamales, pozole, pinatas, not to mention the itself — while pointing out still more parallels with the present.
“Joseph and Mary, they were immigrants, too,” Duarte says. “They were looking for a place to stay, and many doors were shut in their faces. ”
A little later in the conversation, Duarte says she hopes audiences have a beautiful time at “Milagro,” to the extent that they’re inspired to buy a mariachi CD or perhaps tickets to another opera. But she also hopes they notice how “Milagro” humanizes a complicated and contentious issue.
“I would like for people to maybe get to know one human aspect of immigration,” she says,
“(and) see that it’s not just about bills and papers and signatures and laws and black and white, but that there are people involved in this, and stories, and families.”
Between the father-son connection, family-first message and Yuletide setting, “Milagro” has all the makings of a ready-made local holiday tradition. Alonzo hopes it will one day take its place alongside Houston Ballet’s “The Nutcracker.” Most of the principals have signed on to perform in Arizona Opera’s November 2020 production, though, so that tradition may take a few years to cycle back around to Houston.
Nevertheless, “I see it happening,” Duarte says. “Maybe that’s more a wish, but I think it has the potential to become something like that. I think it’s a beautiful holiday story.”