The Last Dream of Frida and Diego: Gabriela Lena Frank's musical mural opens at LA Opera

Gabriela Lena Frank's El último sueño de Frida y Diego, about the force that was Frida Kahlo and her relationship with Diego Rivera has its share of hallucinogenic dream sequences but is mostly concentrated in a ritualistic procession of powerful tableaux of their world and underworld. In Lorena Maza's 2021 production, now appearing at LA Opera, it is brought to life in Jorge Ballina's colorful sets of absorbing beauty and Eloise Kazan's Technicolor costumes against which the central issues in the relationship between two great artists, their art and love, her pain and her suffering play out. 

Nilo Cruz's philosophically-charged libretto, developed in close collaboration with the composer, imagines the reunion of Rivera and the deceased Kahlo on the Mexican holiday El Día de los Muertos – The Day of the Dead – against her determination to never return. Cruz's superb imagination at inventing the story and the ability to manage its many themes elicit from Frank some intensely descriptive music, including dizzying moments of vertigo, and produces an opera that is a mural itself of literally cosmic proportions. And although it's Frank's first opera, it's her 14th piece working with Cruz and the music matches so closely the emotion of the words that it might be considered a stage play with music. 

The music is Frank's own language, strong and brilliantly orchestrated, richly sculpted using all the colors of the two artists' work without any overtly Mexican or other cultural influences. It takes full advantage of the libretto to create an arresting series of arias and moments not only for Kahlo and Rivera but for a cruelly malicious Keeper of the Dead called Catrina, based on a figure from Aztec tradition, and the larger than life Leonardo, a Greta Garbo impersonator hoping for a day pass back to life. 

Daniela Mack raged and soared in Frank's intense verismo set pieces, particularly in the great Act 1 set piece “Agonía”, tangibly transmitting Frida's pain by the sheer force of her own empathy punctuated by outbursts from the orchestra. Alfredo Daza infused Rivera with warmth and eloquence as he called for his wife to rejoin him. Ana María Martínez's Catrina created musical electricity, whether singing or dancing, almost stealing the show. Countertenor Key'mon W Murrah recreated a Garbo-ish alter ego of extravagant proportions who allows Frida to reflect on how she understands the loneliness of Queen Christina in the 1933 film, one of Garbo's most celebrated roles, and to let loose some of the evening's most thrilling high notes. 

The LA Opera Orchestra, sounding lithe and virtuosic, followed Lina Gonzalez-Granados with enthusiasm and a brilliant range of colors. From the first complex, conflicted chords and rumbling thunder, it was clear that the orchestra was in great shape. They created real dramatic excitement out of what is basically a series of static scenes, as when Catrina in her ceremonial skeleton costume introduces Frida in Act 1 and the two take off on a duo of Handelian energy; or in Act 2 when Daza's Diego, wondering what to paint, makes sounds like Wotan summoning the Magic Fire. 

The second act is more relentlessly steeped in death but contains its share of arresting moments, like or Frida hearing the “voice of blue” in her duet with Diego as he dances with other women in cross-rhythms. Her anger (“All the hurt I painted instead of killing you”) subsides into a strained dialogue of death wishes and homicidal thoughts. When it is all resolved by the god of the underworld, Diego and Frida are left alone on a bare stage hung with examples of her art. “Come to the canvas, you will live in a painting, you will love in blue,” he entreats. As a bell tolls a requiem, the reborn lovers cast a last sigh to the heavens and die, Catrina leading the dance of death.