River of joy
Strong cast buoys opera ‘Florencia en el Amazonas.’
The unalloyed passion coursing through “Florencia en el Amazonas” in its first production at Florida Grand Opera is a pungent pleasure.
Composer Daniel Catán’s 1996 musical voyage up the titular South American river tracks loves lost and found in a narrative spiced with Gabriel Garcia Marquezstyle magical realism.
The passenger list on the steamboat El Dorado (the Spaniard’s mythical city of gold) includes a young couple so afraid of the potential pain of betrayed love that they reject the opportunity at first. Down the ship’s railing as the jungle passes by is the long-married couple whose relationship has frayed near breaking in its own emotional undergrowth.
But at the center is the mature contemplation of the title character, a Brazilian opera diva who has discovered that two decades of international success cannot fill the abyss created when she abandoned the lover of her youth, the man whose adoration inspired her to seek the career.
Catán, a Mexican composer who died in 2011, created a ravishing melodic score that swells with echoes of Puccini, Ravel, Strauss, Stravinsky and Debussy, but also film scores like those of Erich Wolfgang Korngold at Warner Brothers and even John Williams. The result is a voice solely his own.
Less acknowledged, the opera’s libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain and translated into English here by Jeremy Sortore is at every step just as emotionally rich without becoming cloying.
The story inspired by Marquez, but not drawn from a specific work, posits the middle-aged Florencia Grimaldi journeying incognito from Colombia to her hometown of Manaus in Brazil to perform a concert that she hopes will attract her first lover, Cristobel. He disappeared into the jungle to hunt butterflies after they parted.
Among the others aboard all looking forward to hearing Florencia sing are Arcadio, a young deckhand anxiously searching for some purpose in life. He becomes smitten with Rosalba, a journalist who spent two years preparing the notes for a book about Grimaldi and hopes to interview her in Manaus. Narrating the odyssey is Riolobo, a charismatic first mate who later turns into a mystical shaman with butterfly wings. A storm seems to cost one character’s life, Rosalba’s precious notebook is destroyed, and Riolobo turns into a river spirit. Oh, and there’s cholera ahead. As well as true love. The tale reveres the value of love, but it is more clear-eyed than some dewy paean by recognizing its conflicts and complexities.
This production is especially notable for its use of Opera Colorado’s physically simple but evocative sets, the stylish turn-of-the-century gowns, and the lighting that evolves as the journey moves into ever stranger territory. But above all, an entire essay could be written about Aaron Rhyne’s ingenious use of animated projections that track the ever changing scenery seen from the railing of the boat — vistas of rippling waters, dense jungles, Maxfield Parrish-like clouds at sunset all slowly passing by the El Dorado.
Surprisingly, the stunning visuals and even Catán’s breathtaking score do not overshadow the strength of an unassailable cast who act their parts with more credibility than many of their colleagues in the field.
“Florencia en el Amazonas” is appearing through Saturday at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets cost $19-$175. Call 800-741-1010 or go to FGO.org.