From among the six newbies up on this season’s cartellóne, I had seen one, Dead Man Walking, in its capable 2002 NYCO production. From the other five, I decided on Florencia en el Amazonas, with music by Daniel Catán and libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain, an opera that has been around since 1996 and had several productions over that span. In doing so, I was following the silo-hopping philosophy of programming so clearly articulated by Peter Gelb and Yannick Nézet-Seguin—one for this Identity Group, one for that, etc., and before we run out of Identity Groups, we’ll have several silos-full of previously untapped, mutually exclusive customers. Having seen plenty of operas from my own IG, and having checked in on the intersectional black/gay one (see Fire Shut Up in My Bones, 10/15/21), I felt it only proper to drop in on the Latino one. In pre-production publicity, emphasis had been placed on the fact that Florencia is only the third Spanish-language opera to be presented in the company’s history. This is not inclusion! But my friends, what Spanish-language operas? There is the zarzuela repertory, which contains much delightful romantic music, but which really belongs on the stage of the superb light-opera company we don’t have. Beyond that—care to dust off Enrique Granados’ Goyescas, which racked up four performances in 1915-16, two of them on double bills with crowd-pleasers? Or—a likelier shot, actually—Manuel de Fallas’s La Vida Breve, which managed three outings ten years later, starring the beloved Lucrezia Bori and paired with a ballet (Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol)? ^(I) Otherwise (and I would be pleased to learn of anything I’m missing) I can think only of the Ginastera operas—perhaps the NYCO’s Lincoln Center opener, Don Rodrigo,  or maybe Bomarzo, whose musico-theatrical titillations might overcome the gravitational pull of the tone-row idiom for an audience no longer accustomed to it.

Florencia is self-avowedly under the influence of the “magical realism” of Gabriel García Márquez. In it Florencia, an idolized opera diva, leaves her La Scala triumphs to return to her native Brazil and there undertake the risky riverboat journey up the Amazon to Manaus. She’s in search of a reunion with her lost love and inspiration, Cristóbal, who years before (she discovers en route) had disappeared into the jungle in search of a rare butterfly. She travels incognito. With her is an assortment of passengers: a woman who has been researching a biography of the diva and seeks an in-depth interview with her; the riverboat’s Captain; his nephew, who works on the crew; a couple whose marriage is fraying; and a fellow called Riolobo (“Riverwolf”) whose nature seems to hover between humanity and the natural elements. Along the way, Florencia sings of her soulful mission, the nephew sings of his longing to see faraway places, and there are incidents: the biographer’s notes are lost in the river but recovered; the married couple quarrel over dinner; and there is a violent storm during which the boat is grounded, but gets underway again with what seems like occult intercession. Upon reaching Manaus with its great opera house after these vicissitudes, the passengers find they cannot enter the city because of a plague. They have made important self-discoveries and reconciliations, however, and Florencia herself undergoes a sort of Daphne-esque transformation and spiritual reunion with her long-lost lepidopterist. This synopsis is of course reductive—each of these occurrences is meant to be suffused with deep meaning for the characters, conveyed primarily by the singing, and with a strong sense of communion with the spirits of river and jungle, conveyed mostly by the orchestral writing.