ARTS & THEATER

Cincinnati Opera’s ‘Frida’ tinged with emotion, fiery spirit

Janelle Gelfand
Cincinnati Enquirer
Catalina Cuervo sings the title role of Cincinnati Opera's "Frida" by Robert Xavier Rodriguez through July 8.

“I never complain,” sings Frida Kahlo, in Cincinnati Opera’s “Frida.” “I simply do it with my paintings.”

Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s 1991 opera “Frida” is an unflinching view of the artist’s lifelong torments as well as her passions.

Frida Kahlo’s surreal self-portraits often mirrored her life. She survived polio at age 6, and in 1925, she was nearly killed in a bus accident in which a rail impaled her body. She endured pain, multiple surgeries and miscarriages.

In her turbulent marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, they both flaunted their infidelities, he with Frida’s sister, Cristina; she with the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

It’s clearly the stuff of opera. But “Frida,” which opened Friday in the Jarson-Kaplan Theater at the Aronoff Center, is not always serious.  Her world as told in the opera includes joyous dancing by brilliantly costumed Mexican dancers at her wedding to Diego. There is an entertaining scene between the artist wearing her traditional Mexican Tehuana dress and snooty patrons at a New York party with the Rockefellers and Fords.

And just as engaging is Rodriguez’s musical score, which is as complex and richly layered as Frida’s personality. It is colored with folkloric Mexican music, jazz, sophisticated modernism, sensuous atmosphere and subtle musical quotations.

It’s an inventive hybrid. With its Broadway-style songs, amplified singers, dialogue and monologues, this opera might be just as happy on the musical theater stage.

Cincinnati Opera’s production, which coincides with Kahlo’s 110th birthday, debuted at Michigan Opera Theatre in 2015. Cincinnati is the 16th city to mount the work.

The opera unfolds in 13 scenes over two acts to a vivid libretto by Hilary Blecher and Migdalia Cruz.

Monika Essen’s fantasy-like set design was on two levels, allowing Diego to paint his murals on a platform, or carry on with his lovers as Frida painted on the level below. Essen’s use of projections on several “canvases” was extraordinary. Once, Frida was photographed in a gown and shawl, imitated by the projected image of a cover of Vogue magazine behind her.

As a sign of her ever-present dance with death, Calaveras – dancers in skull masks – accompanied her on her life’s journey. In one of the opera’s most powerful moments, director Jose Maria Condemi staged Frida’s miscarriage as a nightmarish scene with the Calaveras, a puppet on a stick and streams of red ribbons. As Kahlo was presented with a mass of ribbons representing her miscarriage, projected behind her was the famous painting of her in a hospital bed lying in a pool of blood (“Henry Ford Hospital”).

Catalina Cuervo as Frida and Ricardo Herrera as Diego Rivera in "Frida" by Robert Xavier Rodriguez at Cincinnati Opera.

Catalina Cuervo’s performance as Frida was nothing short of a tour-de-force. She inhabited the role completely, from the defiant schoolgirl who joins the Mexican Communist Party to the woman who lusts for life in all of its interpretations.

Cuervo’s monologues were delivered in a dusky contralto. In arias, her interpretations were infused with fiery emotion.

In Act II, Condemi crafted a sensuous, slow-motion scene for Frida and her lovers of both sexes. Bathed in white light, she sang topless in a bathtub, wearing the strapped corset mimicking the one the artist painted in “The Broken Column.” Rodriguez’s music included a languid violin solo. (The production has earned an “R” rating, partly due to nudity.)

Ricardo Herrera’s portrayal of Diego Rivera was both seamless and larger-than-life. A firm bass-baritone, he was convincing whether vowing that “art is for the common man,” before leaving Mexico for New York, or expansively promising Rockefeller that his mural for Rockefeller Center would be “the story of humankind – science, factories, assembly lines.”

When he eventually painted Lenin into the mural, it was splashed with white paint, a wonderful video effect.

As a couple, they were charismatic and believable.  At one point, Frida noted that Diego “paints the big outside. I paint the secrets inside. It makes for a very pretty marriage.”

Among other cast members, Jennifer Cherest made a sensitive Cristina, Frida’s sister. Much of the cast was rounded out by Cincinnati Opera Young Artists, who sang anthems as Mexican revolutionaries and danced in cocktail attire as Frida taught them to dance “El jarabe.”

Orchestrated for 11 instruments, including accordion, guitar, strings, brass and a bevy of percussion, the music has leanness and irony reminiscent, as the composer has noted, of Kurt Weill. Gershwin-like jazz inhabits scenes of upscale New York in the 1930s. Its Mexican rhythms and folk-like tunes may sound familiar, but Rodriguez, a San Antonio native of Mexican descent, said that they are of his own invention.

Conductor Andrés Cladera provided lithe direction, and the musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performed superbly in the small pit.

The ending leading up to Kahlo’s final dance of death, a seductive waltz, was too drawn out.  But “Frida” succeeds in illustrating both her fierce independence and her indomitable spirit. It leaves an indelible imprint that lingers long afterward.

Cincinnati Opera’s “Frida” continues through July 8 at the Aronoff Center. The run is sold out. Information: 513-241-2742, cincinnatiopera.com