Lyric Opera 2021-2022 Issue 4 Florencia en el Amazonas

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 31 Mexican composer to be presented by a major American company. Puente Catán recalls that after seeing the production, David Gockley, general director of Houston Grand Opera at the time, commissioned Catán to write a new opera. Initially, Gockley hoped to launch a producing partnership with Colombia and Mexico, but that never happened; instead, Florencia en el Amazonas became a three-company commission, with Houston presenting the premiere in 1996, followed by the other partners—first LA Opera, then Seattle Opera. Florencia was finally produced in Mexico earlier this year to celebrate the work’s 25th anniversary. The libretto was the result of a close collaboration between Catán and prominent screenwriter Marcela Fuentes-Berain. The two developed the characters together, and given Catán’s own passionate devotion to the printed word, it was fortunate that Fuentes-Berain’s writing was exquisitely elegant. Among Catán’s many literary friends was another celebrated writer, the late Álvaro Mutis, who had been the best friend of the legendary Gabriel García Marquez. “Álvaro loved boats and rivers,” Puente Catán recalls, “and he was actually a big influence on the libretto.” The overriding inspiration for Florencia was García Marquez, whose works are pervaded by magical realism. When asked for her perspective on that concept, Puente Catán explains that “it’s when fantastical things happen in people’s lives. For Latin Americans, it’s like those magical moments are integrated into the way we live.” An example from her own life reveals exactly what Puente Catán means: “My aunt died, and three days after, I suddenly found her little box with threads and needles and pins on the stairs of my house—yes, this actually happened! Instead of me saying, ‘Maybe this dropped from a bag,’ I said, ‘Oh, my niña came to visit and left me this box just to remind me that she’s still around.’ I’m a Latin American person, and I grew up with the notion of magical realism. There’s a fine line between the real and the fantastic. For Latin American people, fantastical things are as concrete as reality! If you asked me today, ‘Do you really believe that your aunt came to say hello?’, I’d say, ‘Yes. She was leaving me her little box to remember her.’” Florencia isn’t based on a work of García Marquez, but Catán’s piece is steeped in the writer’s oeuvre. “Daniel talked about García Marquez’s relationship with love in his books . . . the impossibility of love; even though there are a lot of characters who are in love or want to be loved, in the end something happens and the love doesn’t continue. García Marquez’s writing fascinated Daniel with its marriage between fantastical moments and concreteness. His use of the Spanish language is just extraordinary. I think Daniel was very drawn to García Marquez’s sense of narrative. Also, in Florencia , the whole notion of being on a boat searching for one’s lost love bears a resemblance to García Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera . I invite everyone to read that book after they see Florencia , so they can understand exactly what the book and the opera have in common.” Central to the libretto is the boat on which all the action takes place. Its special significance is noted by Puente Catán: “The boat is called the El Dorado , a name that has many connotations for Latin Americans. You can think of the Spanish searching for gold, but more than that, the name makes you think of sunshine in your life. Daniel’s mother called him not ‘my son’ but ‘my sun .’ We hear El Dorado and think of something that is gold-like, related not to wealth, but to luminosity.” The opera’s plot integrates more straightforward characters—the younger and older couples, the captain, and Florencia—with a particularly enigmatic figure: the omnipresent Riolobo. Puente Catán describes him as “a creature of magical realism. On the surface he’s just an ordinary man who works on the boat, which he knows inside out, but he’s also like the wise man of the jungle. When the boat is going into the storm, he has an aria in which he becomes a flying creature. He’s like a shaman, in a way—a shaman of love and of the river. He’s as real and concrete as you and me, but he can transform himself and speak the language of nature.” The Arcadio-Rosalba character relationship involves much intense emotional discussion of the negative elements of falling in love. Puente Catán considers it “very autobiographical for Daniel—as were all of his works, in a way. They’re his love life in different stages. Writing music is for me a process of self-discovery and self-understanding. I am concerned, especially, with the nature of love. I believe that the experience of love is fleeting, fragile and interminable. I believe it is the only point where life and death intertwine. I believe it is the only moment where time stops and human beings are permitted a taste of immortality. I identify the essence of music with these concerns, and it is through music that I try to capture them and understand them. Above all other art forms, music is privileged when it tries to reach our most intimate feelings. Music always speaks to us with the truth. We do not question it, for we know that it never lies. –Daniel Catán