| |
|
|
Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar premieres at Tanglewood
BY DAVID WEININGER
|
|
|
|
|
Eleven years ago, Osvaldo Golijov’s Yiddishbbuk, a series of "inscriptions" for string quartet, was premiered at Tanglewood, the result of a Fromm Commission from the Tanglewood Music Center. It was one of the first important compositions by the Argentinian composer, and a herald of things to come. When Golijov returns to the Berkshires next week for the premiere of his chamber opera Ainadamar, he will come as one of the busiest and most admired composers of the day. Ainadamar is about the last days of the great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, who was murdered during the Spanish Civil War. The decision to focus on García Lorca was, according to Golijov, "both simple and convoluted. I’ve always loved Lorca’s poetry and plays," he says over the phone from Tanglewood, where he’s supervising rehearsals. "And I wrote songs to his poems up to my mid 20s." But Ainadamar is less biographical than a study in "how a real human being becomes a story." Because García Lorca’s death has already achieved near-mythic status, Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang decided to focus on Maragarita Xirgu, the playwright’s Muse and the lead actress in his first major play, Mariana Pineda. García Lorca "foreshadowed in such detail his own death and the meaning of his own life" in this play about another martyred revolutionary. The opera crosses boundaries of time and place to explore how his life and Xirgu’s merge with that of the play’s heroine. Golijov is full of praise for Hwang, whom he calls "a true virtuoso. What I loved about the process was that it was more telepathy than meeting a lot. We met a couple of times, and I told him that I would like something that is real but that also has a fairy-tale quality. Time, timelessness, and flashbacks — they all make sense." Besides Hwang, Golijov’s chief co-conspirators in Ainadamar are artists with whom he’s enjoyed longstanding relationships. About soprano Dawn Upshaw, who’ll sing Xirgu, he says, "I wrote this for her and for her wishes. She said that composers usually write for her more angelic qualities — none of that! She wanted to explore her low octave, which I think is really glorious, so rich." He’s similarly effusive about Robert Spano, who will conduct the Tanglewood performances: "I love him without limits. He’s unbelievable! It is the greatest experience working with Robert and Dawn — once again it’s like telepathy. If they say ‘I think you should change this,’ I definitely change it! To have great musicians who know your musical mind better than you yourself know it, and that are totally committed and are your editors — it’s the best. There’s no ego, it’s simply to create the best musical composition." The performances of Ainadamar — which is on a double bill with the premiere of Dutch composer Roger Zuidam’s Rage d’amours (this one conducted by Stefan Asbury, with soprano Lucy Shelton) — will be the highest-profile events for Golijov since the first Boston performance of La Pasión según San Marcos, a brilliant, genre-defying setting of the St. Mark Passion narrative that embraced Latin American dance and liberation theology. Has the ensuing attention made composing more difficult for him? "Well, it is a burden, and I was scared, of course. It’s much nicer to write something when people don’t expect anything. And for a moment I was under that pressure, but I said to myself: ‘I’m writing this for Dawn, for Bob Spano — these are my friends, they will be my friends afterward. I wanted to do something as beautiful as possible for them. Hopefully the world will like it, but if not, it’s okay.’ Even if it’s a bad piece, it’s okay!" Can he see his music evolving, its style moving in a different direction? He says that his model for this work was Monteverdi ("I love his music, the way it’s incredibly immediate but also very deep"), whose music seems worlds away from the dynamic rhythms of the Pasión. And he uses an astonishing visual metaphor to highlight the different worlds his pieces inhabit. "I always have a strong image [in mind] when I compose. If I think of the Pasión, I think of primary colors, of rhythm as the primary concern. If I think of this piece, I think of the possibilities of an ever-regenerating melody and harmony and saturation. This opera is what I called a lyrical pomegranate — I imagined a pomegranate suspended in mid air and slowly bursting with melodies that are all so bloody. That’s the image that I have." Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and Roger Zuidam’s Rage d’amours will be presented by the Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows and Orchestra on August 10 and 11 at the Tanglewood Theatre in Lenox. Tickets are $10 to $90; call (888) 266-1200.
|
