Frida and Diego Rivera, 1931, by Frida Kahlo. Image via FridaKahlo.org
An opera based on the dramatic lives of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It seems so obvious. Why didn’t someone think of this before?
The Fort Worth Opera has announced a commissioned work, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, reports TheaterJones. Co-produced with the San Diego Opera, the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, and DePauw University School of Music, the news will be formally announced in Mexico City later this month. The opera will debut in Fort Worth in 2020.
The score is by pianist and composer Gabriela Lena Frank with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. In the Fort Worth Opera press release, Cruz states:
“Through her work, Frida gives us permission to find our own personal relationship to life as well as to make sense of life after trauma. Painting helped her to make sense of the universe. For Diego, painting has to do with humanist philosophical reflection, a way of documenting history and social injustice. They both rescue their roots, their Mexican identity from oblivion. As the Aztecs took out human hearts and offered them to the gods, they offer us their hearts through their art, through the lives they lead as witnesses of life in the universe.”
