Opera review: 'Florencia en el Amazonas' lives up to 'magical' billing
“Florencia en el Amazonas,” the 1996 opera inspired by the magical realism of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, has two title characters.
The first is Florencia Grimaldi, an opera diva returning from her glamorous life in Europe to her hometown in the heart of the South American jungle, where she hopes to reunite with the lover she left behind. And the second is the Amazon itself, which the late Mexican composer Daniel Catán evokes with dark, swirling arpeggios to suggest the deceptively languid river and airy, lilting ones like the fluttering of butterflies.
It’s a lush score, both neo-Romantic and neo-Impressionist, and it makes for a ravishing listening experience in a new production by Arizona Opera, which opened Friday, Nov. 13, at Symphony Hall in Phoenix. And staging director Joshua Borths and his design team have done justice to the music with equally evocative visuals.
Set in the early 1900s, the subtle, not-in-a-hurry story takes place on a riverboat, envisioned by scenic designers Douglas Provost and Peter Nolle, that nearly fills the stage. While Florencia, traveling incognito, laments her lost love, ambitious young writer Rosalba and restless sailor Arcadio fight their attraction to each other, and the unhappily married Paula and Álvaro squabble disdainfully over small things. It is a meditation on the permutations of love set against a backdrop of mysterious forces embodied by dancers pirouetting like whirls in the river.
While each of the two acts climaxes with a supernatural transformation, the narrative is built on the simple rhythms of ordinary life. There is a wonderful quartet in which the two couples, one young and one old, barely manage to suppress their emotions during a game of cards, and a soaring romantic duet with Rosalba and Arcadio explaining why they simply can’t fall in love with each other.
Such quotidian rhythms are elevated by an unabashedly poetical libretto (by Marcela Fuentes-Berain, in Spanish), particularly effective in a philosophical argument between Arcadio and his Captain, in which the latter explains that, despite appearance, the boat does not simply travel back and forth along the river, because life only moves in one direction: forward.
Conductor Joseph Mechavich leads the orchestra in an energetic performance of Catán’s mystical score. Four lead roles are double cast — including Riolobo, a crew member who is more than he appears — but the opening-night stars all give strong performances, including Sandra Lopez in full-on diva mode as Florencia and, especially, Susannah Biller and Andrew Bidlock as the reluctant young lovers.
In secondary roles, Adriana Zabala is a standout as Paula for her melancholy mezzo, along with her wonderful comic chemistry with Levi Hernandez as Álvaro. And as the Captain, bass-baritone Calvin Griffin once again shows off the powerful pipes he has been honing for more than two seasons in Arizona Opera’s studio-artist program for up-and-coming singers.
Kudos are also due to costume designer Adriana Diaz, who illustrates the opera’s theme of transformation with a color palette that subtly evolves from formal muted tones to vibrant tropical colors — from the realism to the magical.
Reach the reviewer at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him: Twitter.com/KerryLengel and Facebook.com/LengelonTheater
Arizona Opera: ‘Florencia en el Amazonas’
Reviewed: Friday, Nov. 13.
Remaining performances: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, at Symphony Hall, 75 N. Second St., Phoenix.
Admission: $25-$135.
Details: 602-266-7464, azopera.org.
Also: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22, at Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. $25-$120. 520-293-4336.