‘Ainadamar’ and the Death of Federico García Lorca Command the Stage at LA Opera

When composer Osvaldo Golijov wrote his opera, Ainadamar, in 2003, the facts behind the death of his subject, poet Federico García Lorca, were still unknown. Fascist dictator Francisco Franco maintained that the allegations surrounding the renowned writer’s death were being used as propaganda, saying he “died while mixing with the rebels, these are natural accidents of war.” But most believed Lorca was executed by a right-wing firing squad along with three others.

Taking the stage at LA Opera through May 18, Ainadamar stars mezzo Daniela Mack in the “trouser role” of Lorca opposite soprano Ana María Martínez as Margarita Xirgu, famed Spanish stage actress and Lorca confidant, as well as the story’s narrator. The libretto was written in English by playwright David Henry Hwang and translated by Golijov. Maestra Lina González-Granados conducts.

“I always thought the Dirty War in Argentina was a child of the civil war in Spain,” Golijov, born in La Plata, Argentina, tells Observer. “It was part of why I wrote Ainadamar. When I started the piece, I literally had an image of a pomegranate floating, leaking melodies that were Jewish, Arab, Gypsy, Christian, Flamenco. Because in Spanish, pomegranate means Granada, the city of Lorca. So, I thought of a granada bleeding melodies.”

Director-choreographer Deborah Colker’s 2022 staging includes extended dance elements and otherworldly backdrops. “For better or for worse, you’re going to see me dance,” laughs Martínez, a regular singer with LA Opera, including a scene-stealing Despina in Così Fan Tutte earlier this season with James Conlon conducting. “Where there’s a production that requires dance, I’m all there. I have a very patient choreographer working with me on this, and the dance captain.”

Aside from the role’s physical demands, the dynamic vocal range also takes its toll. “In rehearsal, I’ve been trying to find the moments where it’s clear it’s her as younger or older,” says Martínez of a role that spans a lifetime. “It’s important to be slower in your movements and tired. The younger version is more dynamic, there’s more pride, a taller posture. Later, when she’s going through grief and worry, it’s the lowest part of the range, which is so mezzo. I’ve done roles that are usually done by mezzo (Carmen and others). I’ve always had a comfortable low range. After he’s dies, it gets very floaty, super high tessitura. So, it’s navigating all those parts of the voice.”

Born in Puerto Rico to a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father, Martínez was raised there and in New York City, where she graduated from The Juilliard School and went on to an illustrious career singing in opera houses around the world. In major U.S. cities, she’s begun to notice a change in the air that makes Ainadamar resonate with current events.

“I talked to several Latinos about thi, and I think there is a target on specific groups,” she says of government deportations. “I try not to consume myself with anxiety, but it’s troubling. It terrifies me when I see people who are neighbors or I know casually speaking in a way I would not have recognized a while ago. We study history, and one reason is to hopefully not repeat the mistakes of the past, and yet here we are. This story, the tragedy that occurred in the 1930s, can be seen as happening now. It starts small, and then, in a while, a different reality is established. So, start paying attention.”

Currently living in Massachusetts, Golijov was raised by a piano teacher mother and a physician father. A Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowship winner, his 2007 recording of Ainadamar took home two Grammy Awards. His work in cinema includes soundtracks for filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, such as last year’s Megalopolis. As a teenager, he experienced Argentina’s Dirty War from 1974 through 1983, when a military junta disappeared as many as 30,000 civilians.

“Here it’s just beginning,” he warns. “I never ever imagined, which shows how limited my imagination is, that something like that could end up here. I felt dictatorship would never happen. Now, I’m not so sure. So far, it seems to be very mild, but there are some things that are very scary to me. When an unidentified officer snatches somebody from the street, it reminds me of that time. In Argentina, they would disappear, and no one would know where they were. Here, too, we have people who have been detained, but we don’t know where they are. My having ‘white skin,’ in an ugly way, helps. I would be much more scared if I had brown skin and this accent. I never, ever imagined Ainadamar would have resonance with the reality of America. It takes a long time to build something and a very short time to destroy it.”

The truth about Lorca’s death was revealed in 2015 when documents from a 1965 police file surfaced. They suggest the poet was persecuted for his beliefs as a “socialist and a freemason,” citing rumors of “homosexual and abnormal practices.” After two police searches of his home in Granada, Lorca fled to a friend’s house. In August 1936, just one month after the Spanish Civil War broke out, police surrounded the house and arrested him. He was taken to an area near a place called Fuente Grande where, along with another detainee, he was “executed immediately after having confessed, and was buried in that location, in a very shallow grave, in a ravine.” His remains were never found.

Toward the end of Ainadamar, soprano Vanessa Becerra, who sings Nuria, recites Lorca’s poem: My silken heart / Is filled with light / the lost tolling of bells / And bees and lilies. In it, he refers to the eponymous “fountain of tears,” which translates in Arabic to “ainadamar,” symbolizing Lorca. “His words are perfectly set to music,” sighs Golijov. “With Lorca, everything is there.”