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arts entertainmentPerforming Arts

Fort Worth Opera Festival's mariachi 'El pasado' splendidly performed, but leans on stereotypes

It's the Fort Worth festival's second mariachi opera exploring Mexican-American identities and struggles.

FORT WORTH — Latinos/Hispanics now represent nearly 40 percent of the population of Texas, but you'd never know it from the programming of Dallas' top arts organizations. Fort Worth Opera and the Fort Worth Symphony, on the other hand, have aggressively programmed music by composers from south of the Rio Grande as well as American composers with Latin-American roots.

Two years ago, the Fort Worth Opera Festival presented the mariachi opera Cruzar la cara de la luna, a collaboration between librettist Leonard Foglia and the late Mexican composer, arranger and violinist José "Pepe" Martínez. The same team created this year's festival offering, El pasado nunca se termina (The Past Is Never Finished).  The original Lyric Opera of Chicago production has previously traveled to Houston, San Diego and Phoenix.

Both works, exploring issues of Mexican-American identities and struggles, are particularly timely in our politically charged climate. But while I found Cruzar quite moving, El pasado, which opened Friday night at Bass Performance Hall, seems to me too reliant on stereotypes: rich and enlightened Spanish descendants, poor and superstitious indigenous people. Maddeningly, the program book supplies no synopsis and doesn't even really identify the characters.

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El pasado opens on the eve of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. On a raised platform on the right of the stage, we see the Spanish-descendant landowners, Augustino and Isabel, whose son Luis has just returned from study in England. On the left appear the indigenous mother and daughter, Juana and Amorita, and Juana's fiercely revolutionary son, Acalán.

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Abigail Santos Villalobos (as Amorita), Vanessa Cerda-Alonzo (Juana) and Daniel Montenegro...
Abigail Santos Villalobos (as Amorita), Vanessa Cerda-Alonzo (Juana) and Daniel Montenegro (Luis) star in the Fort Worth Opera's production of El pasada nunca se termina.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

Luis and Amorita cross the cultural divide to fall in love and conceive a child, but both Luis and Acalán are killed. Augustino persuades Amorita to give up the baby, so he can be raised in better circumstances. In the last scene, years later, a Latin-American father and his young son, Enrique and Daniel, come to Mexico seeking their roots. I'll leave it to you — as the program book does — to figure out the connections.

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The vocal writing, interspersed with spoken dialogue, is soaringly romantic-popular. Spanish lines are translated in projected English supertitles; English words appear in Spanish translations.

Accompaniment, alternately rousing and dreamy, is supplied by an upstage spread of Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán — seven violins, three trumpets, a harp and a family of guitars — doubling as chorus. David Hanlon is the offstage conductor.

Ricardo Rivera stars as Acalán in the Fort Worth Opera production of El pasada nunca se...
Ricardo Rivera stars as Acalán in the Fort Worth Opera production of El pasada nunca se termina.(Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)
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Foglia's staging is effectively direct. Designer Elaine J. McCarthy supplies the simple platforms, a well-appointed dining table for the landowners and stunning, high-definition scene-setting projections on upstage screens. Appropriate costumes are by Scott Marr; Chad R. Jung is the lighting designer.

It's an excellent cast. Vanessa Cerda-Alonzo portrays Juana with appropriately earthy tones. The other roles are given more operatic voices, all attractive: Amorita (Abigail Santos Villalobos), Luis (Daniel Montenegro), Acalán (Ricardo Rivera), Augustino (Luis Ledesma), Isabel (Cassandra Zoé Velasco). Paul La Rosa and Francisco Garcia Jr. supply more modern-vernacular impressions as Enrique and Daniel.

The production is amplified, Broadway-style. It was sometimes deafening early on Friday night, but settled down to merely loud. Even fewer decibels would have been welcome.

Details

Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce Streets, Fort Worth. $22 to $185. 817-731-0726, fwopera.org.

Formerly staff classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell continues covering the beat as a freelance writer. Classical music coverage at The News is supported in part by a grant from the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The News makes all editorial decisions.