Donde estoy? Cincinnati Opera's "Florencia en el Amazonas"

"El Dorado" in "Florencia en el Amazonas" Cincinnati Opera, July, 2008

Like its symbol, the butterfly, Daniel Catan's "Florencia en el Amazonas" is a thing of beauty.
    Given its local premiere by Cincinnati Opera Thursday night at Music Hall, it is also a rarity, an opera in Spanish, a first not only for Cincinnati Opera but for any major U.S. opera company when it premiered in Houston in 1996.  It seems destined to enter the repertory easily and to be the harbinger of more Spanish language opera to come.
    "Florencia" succeeds on many levels.  Frankly neo-romantic, with arias, duets, ensembles and choruses, it is first of all, lovely to listen to.
    Think Puccini in Spanish, or as opera artistic director Evans Mirageas put it in his delightful You Tube video "The Top 10 Reasons to See 'Florencia en el Amazonas":
    "If Puccini had moved to Brazil, this is the opera he would have written" (check out Mirageas' video at www.cincinnatiopera.org).
    You can also hear echoes of Benjamin Britten ("Sea Interludes" from "Peter Grimes"), Wagner (when the storm breaks over the boat), Debussy, Ravel and Richard Strauss (colorful scoring) and evocative Latin American rhythm.
   Sung in Spanish with English supertitles, the opera was beautifully performed by a cast of highly effective singing actors, directed by British stage director Andrew Morton.

Alexandra Coku

Heading the cast was American soprano Alexandra Coku as Florencia, an opera diva returning incognito to her native country to find her first love (Christobal, "the man "who gave me my voice" hunts butterflies in the Amazon jungle).  Her arias in act I and, transcendentally at the end of act II, were filled with radiance and emotion.
   "Florencia" was Coku's Cincinnati Opera debut, as it was for all the characters except Turkish bass Borak Bilgili as the Captain.
   Among them was Panamanian-American baritone Nmon Ford, virile, sonorous and agile as Riolobo (he even flies), a mysterious personage who, in various guises, watches over the boat.  The young Mexican tenor Artur Chacon-Cruz displayed a handsome voice complete with pristine high Cs, as the Captain's nephew Arcadio, whose heart's desire is to pilot an airplane instead of a riverboat.
    New York soprano Shana Blake Hill as Rosalba, a journalist working on a biography of Florencia, matched Chacon-Cruz note-for-note, including her own high C in their passionate "anti-love duet" in act II, where Arcadio and Rosalba refuse to succumb to the love they are beginning to feel for each other..
    American mezzo Emily Golden and New Mexico baritone Carlos Archuleta were similarly well-matched as Paula and Alvaro, a warring, middle-aged couple seeking to re-kindle their love.
    Created for Houston Grand Opera by, which co-commissioned "Florencia" with Los Angeles and Seattle Opera, the production by Alexandra Zambello with scenic design by Robert Israel is simple, but stunning.  The "set piece" is El Dorado, a riverboat steaming down the Amazon toward the opera house in Manaus, Brazil, where Florencia is scheduled to sing.
    The boat arrived damaged from the opera's previous staging but was re-built by Cincinnati Opera for the ample Music Hall stage.  Motorized with a driver insider, it puffs smoke and accomplishes scene changes simply by turning to reveal another compartment or area on the boat's upper and lower decks.
    Turning it all into magic is the lighting, designed by British-born Paul Pyant.  Clouds, lightning, palm fronds, richly-painted dawns and sunsets play off a scrim that descends behind the boat as it departs down the river. Cut-outs of a crescent moon and orange sun rise and set childlike against it. A touch of "magical realism," internal states of mind played out in external metaphors, appears in the use of pink foil "raindrops" ("cherry-colored," says the libretto) as a storm, itself a metaphor, descends on the boat in the wake of the turbulent emotions of act I.
    Enhancing the visual magic was a quintet of dancers, denizens of the Amazon River, who leapt and bounded around the boat (they fly, too).  Sometimes they interacted with the characters, as when Arcadio recovers Rosalba's precious notebook after it accidentally falls into the river.  The dancers often appeared streaming flags before them like waves and in a most engaging moment, disgorged the body of Alvaro from a crocodilian creature represented by a long banner.  (Alvaro is called back to life by Paula who mourns his death in a tender aria after he has fallen overboard trying to prevent logs from ramming the boat during the storm.)
    Catan was inspired to write "Florencia" by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose "Love in a Time of Cholera" ends with an Amazon River voyage.  The libretto, by Marquez' protégé Marcela Fuentes-Cerain is masterful, uniting many strands into what becomes a voyage of discovery for the characters.  They all seek love, but must strive to attain it by conquering fear (Rosalba and Arcadio), pride (Paul and Alvaro) and the shackles of fame (Florencia, who sings repeatedly "I am not my name").
    American conductor Steven Mercurio led the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with a sure hand and the CSO's playing was typically fine though more projection of individual voices would have been welcome now and then.  The percussion section lent a great deal of flavor on everything from mallet instruments and drums to thunder sheet.  The Cincinnati Opera chorus appeared as lively vendors in act I on the boat dock and offstage in response to the winged Riolobo's invocations to the gods to save the El Dorado during the storm.
    Is it too late for Florencia and Christobal?  Come to the repeat at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall and experience the magical, coup-de-theatre conclusion.
   Tickets at www.cincinnatiopera.org, or call (513) 241-2742.  Hear Mirageas and Catan in a pre-performance conversation at 6:30 p.m. in the Music Hall auditorium