There actually was no cause for Mary Zimmerman to get caught whereas directing her new manufacturing of “Florencia en el Amazonas,” which premieres on Thursday on the Metropolitan Opera.
The staging is her sixth for the Met, and at first look, the work appeared to be sq. in her wheelhouse. Her storytelling usually has a dreamlike high quality, and right here was an opera suffused with poetic oneirism and the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez: the story of a diva touring incognito on an Amazonian riverboat ostensibly to carry out in Manaus, a metropolis nestled deep within the rainforest, however actually to attempt to reunite together with her lacking lover and muse, the butterfly hunter Cristóbal.
But when time got here to begin conceptualizing her manufacturing, Zimmerman discovered herself stalling. The match was possibly too good.
“I’m fairly a bit overidentified with Florencia,” Zimmerman mentioned after a current rehearsal. “I’m single, and I type of misplaced the good love of my life as a result of I couldn’t cease doing theater, and I couldn’t be smaller than I used to be. A whole lot of us performers and artists with damaged hearts, partly all the things we placed on is for that individual, whether or not they’re going to see it or not.”
Zimmerman ultimately bought over her bout of director’s block, to mount a milestone for the Met: Daniel Catán’s work, with a libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain, is the corporate’s first by a Mexican composer. A car for the soprano Ailyn Pérez, the manufacturing can even be performed by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
“Florencia” is nearly completely set on the boat, and most productions, beginning with Francesca Zambello’s premiere staging at Houston Grand Opera in 1996, have made the ship a scenic centerpiece. However Zimmerman turned her gaze outward. “I wished to emphasise the pure world and the outside,” she mentioned. On the Met, the main focus might be on what the passengers see throughout their journey moderately than on their mode of transportation.
That shift of emphasis is in accordance with Catán’s rating, Nézet-Séguin mentioned. “I’ve by no means been within the Amazon, however any forest you first go in, it simply appears to be like like a bunch of timber and leaves the identical shade, then you definitely spend a couple of minutes, open your eyes and there’s 1,000,000 particulars,” he added. “I really feel like this piece is this manner.”
Amazonian wildlife had been a fruitful supply of inspiration for the artistic group, particularly the costume designer Ana Kuzmanic: Even the putting outfits and headpieces that symbolize the unfold of cholera had been drawn from the opera’s setting. “We found there’s one of these fowl within the Amazon referred to as the harpy eagle, in order that’s what they’re primarily based on,” Zimmerman mentioned. “Initially, they had been similar to straight-up Venetian masks, however then we made them extra just like the animal.”
The costumes additionally signify bodily parts just like the ever-present water, at one level with the summoning of figures representing waves. “I actually really feel the blue waves are one of the best water costuming I’ve ever seen,” Zimmerman mentioned. “As a result of representing water onstage, apart from utilizing water, is tough. It’s changeable, it’s transferring on a regular basis.” (She ought to know: Her breakthrough got here in 2001 with a Tony Award-winning staging of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” that concerned an precise pool. She additionally tackled opera’s most well-known pond with “Rusalka” on the Met in 2017.)
To Zimmerman’s delight, Catán’s rating even contains musical interludes wherein she may let her creativeness run free. “My favourite is the three-and-a-half-minute one, which I name ‘evening into day,’ or we generally name it ‘the creature ballet,’” she mentioned of a scene that entails a bottle containing wedding ceremony rings. “We simply love watching it and dealing on it.”
For Nézet-Séguin, the playfulness and fluidity of Zimmerman’s staging really feel like a solution to Catán’s rating. “The orchestration may be very creative,” he mentioned. “It’s, in fact, evoking the character with the birds and the noise of the forest, nevertheless it’s additionally very properly developed when it comes to adopting the final circulate of the piece, which isn’t static. I really feel like he’s so good at suggesting a relentless wave, like a river or just like the ocean, or any physique of water, that’s by no means stopping.” (Catán, who died in 2011, embraced a neo-Romantic fashion and infrequently has been in comparison with Puccini.)
Simply because the landscapes change over the course of Florencia’s journey, so do the vacationers — the discoveries are as emotional as they’re visible. “A lot is reworking and altering all through the opera,” Zimmerman mentioned. “Florencia type of finds her true id by shedding her well-known id, and there’s a type of dissolution into the pure world, I believe.”
Pérez additionally described the opera’s journey as greater than bodily. “It nearly turns into a subplot of a way more religious and neighborhood story, with a humorousness and a way that the vacation spot is about having fun with the journey,” she mentioned, “reflecting on selections and selecting love and viewing demise as a rebirth into one other life.”
In a way, engaged on “Florencia” has additionally meant a visit again to Pérez’s personal roots. The Met hasn’t introduced a Spanish-language opera in practically a century, and Pérez, born in Chicago to Mexican immigrants, is thrilled to lastly sing within the language she spoke at residence as a baby. “It’s not even the Castilian Spanish of Spain however Mexican Spanish, Latin American Spanish,” she mentioned, “so I don’t should be corrected over how I say my phrases for the primary time in my life.”
That feeling of connection, each to at least one’s self and to the encircling world, makes “Florencia” a becoming addition to the Met’s efforts at higher inclusivity lately. For Nézet-Séguin, it’s necessary “to have various prospects on our stage, alternating moods or methods of enthusiastic about life,” he mentioned. “And clearly this opera has a variety of humor, generally a bit dry humor, generally extra playful, and I see the manufacturing is adapting to this very a lot.”
Zimmerman is unquestionably on board, so to talk, with that view. “You need to help and elevate and entertain the viewers,” she mentioned. “My motto is: By no means a boring second, and at all times be blossoming.”
