Osvaldo Golijov's chamber opera Ainadamar has won many fans through its Grammy award-winning recording and various stagings in America, but whether it works in concert performance is open to question.The murder of the poet Federico García Lorca by Falangist fascists early in the Spanish Civil War is the pivotal event of Golijov's piece, with the scene of his death at the ancient well of Ainadamar ("fountain of tears" in Arabic) giving its title. Told in flashback through the eyes of Lorca's friend and colleague, the actress Margarida Xirgu, the strength of David Henry Hwang's libretto lies in its combination of historical veracity and symbolic force. Xirgu - about to play the eponymous heroine of Lorca's play Mariana Pineda, an 18th-century revolutionary who died for her cause - agonises not only that Lorca foretold his martyrdom, but that she herself could have prevented it.
Soprano Dawn Upshaw realised this vividly, and the resonances with the passion of Christ and, through Xirgu and her pupil Nuria, with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, were potent, but the element of Lorca's persecution for his homosexuality is more confused. There is ambiguity in having the role of Lorca and his ghost sung by a mezzo-soprano (Kelley O'Connor), but the tangle of emotions across time was not always convincing in the less-than-intimate space of Symphony Hall and without recourse to the effects of proper theatrical lighting. More chilling was the Moorish inflection of Jesus Montoya's Ruiz Alonso, who orders Lorca's execution, and the incorporation of the gunshots into a rhythmic fusillade.Golijov's eclectic score was strongly delivered by Robert Spano with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Grammy award-winning lineup. However, it is a curious mix, with its undeniable Latin energy counteracted by an indulgent sentimentality sinking into the cliche of musicals, rather than conveying operatic truth.
