Review: Mariachi opera 'Cruzar' soars joyfully
"Cruzar la Cara de la Luna," which opens the 2014-15 season at Arizona Opera, is a "mariachi opera" in the same sense that the Who's "Tommy" is a rock opera. It is a musical drama, but one that's clearly outside the classical music tradition that defines opera. It is more of a book musical, consisting of discrete songs connected by spoken dialogue, rather than being sung through.
Don't mistake this observation for a criticism. Not everything has to fit inside the box, and while "Cruzar" isn't really an opera, it is gorgeous, smart and moving. It is exactly the right work to announce a change in direction at the once-staid Arizona Opera, reaching out to new audiences while delivering a fulsome surprise to the audience it already has.
Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera and premiered in 2010, "Cruzar" tells a simple but compelling story in one lean, 90-minute act. Laurentino, a Mexican immigrant living in Phoenix, is old and dying, slipping in and out of lucidity. He is remembering a past that he has kept hidden from the son and granddaughter at his bedside.
A dramatic dropping of the curtain takes us back 50 years to the town of his birth in Michoacán in southern Mexico, on the day of his wedding to the bubbly Renata. They sing happily of the future they will build together, playfully arguing about just how many children will be enough. But soon comes a fateful decision. Laurentino wants to go to the United States to work, where he can make 10 times his current income and be "10 times more a man."
The poetical symbol for migration is the Monarch butterflies that return every year to the south after their sojourn in the north. Like them, Laurentino promises he will "always return." But life doesn't always follow the wishes of the heart, or the sentiments of our metaphors.
The affecting story, told in a mix of Spanish and English, is by librettist Leonard Foglia, who also directs the production. The music is by José "Pepe" Martínez, longtime bandleader of Mexico's famed Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, which also provides the show's 15-piece band, playing horns, strings and guitars and singing onstage with the cast of characters.
The songs soar joyfully, even in moments of sorrow, and the singing is flat-out gorgeous. Octavio Moreno and Cecilia Duarte match perfectly in their duets as Laurentino and Renata, while the pure tones of tenor David Guzman, as a long-lost son left behind in Mexico, steal the show.
The staging is simple but compelling, with a lovely confetti effect filling the air with fluttering paper butterflies. One might quibble with the occasionally flat acting in the short dialogue scenes, but the power of the music carries the day.
The opening-night performance on Friday, Oct. 10, was greeted by enthusiastic hoots and applause from a nearly full house. As one audience member remarked after the final bows, "Good for Arizona Opera." And good for Arizona.
Reach the reviewer at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him at facebook.com/LengelOnTheater or twitter.com/Kerry Lengel.
Arizona Opera: 'Cruzar la Cara de la Luna'
Reviewed Friday, Oct. 10. Additional performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12. Symphony Hall, 75 N. Second St., Phoenix. $25-$135. 602-266-7464, azopera.org. Also: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19. Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. 520-293-4336.