Review: Down the River with Catan's FLORENCIA at New York City Opera

If you're a fan of Puccini-esque music and the "magic realism" of the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Daniel Catan's FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS may be for you. Others might find the opera--which had its New York premiere at New York City Opera's home at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theatre--like falling into a production of "Alice in Puccini-land." It had a seemingly endless string of arias at a fever pitch, which distracted from some first-rate performances.

The opera came to New York with distinctive credentials. It was commissioned by the opera companies in Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle and had its premiere at the Houston Grand Opera back in 1996, when it was headed by David Gockley, who's about to step down as head of the San Francisco Opera. In an interview last week in The New York Times, he talked about his feelings about modernism and the way it has failed "the mainstream opera establishment" in the U.S. "I think it's too intellectual, it's too unattractive to the ear," he said and tried to "steer the new pieces away from that."

Well, to borrow from Rodgers & Hammerstein, FLORENCIA "went about as fer as it could go" in the opposite direction. No one could accuse it of being too intellectual or unattractive--not necessarily bad things--but it took on an agitated tone that seemed to ignore moments when subtlety might have served the story better.

Perhaps part of the blame goes to the production, originally conceived by director John Hoomes, Barry Steele (video and lighting) and Cara Schneider (scenic design) for the Nashville Opera, with costumes by Ildiko Debreczeni. While it was sometimes effective, there were times when it threatened to spin out of control, for instance, with its dizzying effects of the river's constant movement.

The tale takes place on a boat going down the Amazon to the opera house in Manaus (one of the locations used in Werner Herzog's opera-inspired film FITZCARRALDO), where a group of "pilgrims" is heading to hear the great opera singer Florencia Grimaldi perform. They are unaware--these being the days before YouTube--that she is one of passengers on board, going in search of her long lost love Cristobal, a butterfly hunter. While the Spanish libretto by Marcela Fuentes-Berain is not based specifically on any work by Marquez, it incorporates some of the "magic realism"--inclusion of magical elements into otherwise realistic fiction--he is famous for.

Whatever the opera's shortcomings, the Mexican-born Catan, who died in 2011 at 62, certainly knew how to write for the classically trained voice, executed here in deft partnership with the New York City Opera Orchestra under Dean Williamson. At the head of the list of unfamiliar singers turning in top-notch performances was soprano Elizabeth Caballero in the title role, with a full-bodied, lyric voice--in music that sometimes threatened to turn into TURANDOT--that was a find. She even managed her final transformation into a butterfly, to join her lost love, with aplomb.

Soprano Sarah Beckman-Turner and tenor Won Whi Choi made some solid contributions as the young lovers of the piece, Rosalba and Arcadio, while bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos had strong moments as the captain's enigmatic helper (except when he appeared as a butterfly). Mezzo Lisa Chavez and baritone Luis Ledesma, as the bickering couple Paula and Alvaro who patch things up, and Kevin Thompson as the Captain, filled out the cast admirably. Nicholas Villeneuve's choreography for Ballet Hispanico's talented pre-professional group, BHdos, was an interesting, often exciting, addition to the proceedings, literally taking on the character of the river--though it eventually became part of the production's philosophy that "too much is never enough."

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