*El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,* May 14 2026
- ladiesvoices
- 13 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Stephanie and I saw El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego on May 14, 2026. It's an opera with music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank (she just won it a couple weeks ago!) on a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. The opera had its premiere in San Diego in 2022 and has also been produced at San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. We didn't know it when we bought the tickets but we happened to see the Met premiere.
The opera opens on the Day of the Dead in 1957. Diego Rivera asks that his late wife, Frida Kahlo, come back to life. He doesn't know it but he's dying himself and we see a reversal of the Orpheus myth - - rather than Orpheus going to the land of the dead to bring Eurydice to the land of the living, we have Kahlo coming to the land of the living to bring Rivera to the land of the dead.
Good news first. The music was beautiful, distinctive, and written on a grand scale. The music for the chorus was especially impressive, they had a full and gorgeous sound. Frank worked some distinctly Mexican sounds into the harmonies and orchestration. One scene in Mexico City featured the trumpets playing in the thrilling, brash manner of mariachi players. We'd never heard sounds like that at the Met before, that was a treat. Stephanie also loved Frank's use of two piccolos and the frequent use of marimbas. She thought it might be a difficult score for the orchestra but the effect was fabulous.
The high point of the performance, for me, was a moment early in the show. Three men recognize Rivera and engage him in conversation. They call him "Don Diego" and they interact him with a charming mixture of deference and familiarity. Their music is warm and sweet, their lovely harmonies made me think of a group I love from the 50s and 60s, Trio Los Panchos. They concluded their conversation by saying something like, "It was a pleasure meeting you, Don Diego." Rivera responded by saying, "Adios" and the music turned cold. It was made clear that the personal connection was only flowing in one direction. I found this thrilling - - Frank used the music to characterize and dramatize which is the mark of a first class composer for the theatre.
The performances were all very strong. Isabel Leonard gave great pathos to Kahlo. I've heard her five or six times at the Met and she always gives a stellar performance.
Carlos Álvarez sang beautifully as Rivera. I don't believe I'd heard him before, I enjoyed his singing. He's a Verdi baritone and you can hear that elegance and nobility in his singing.
Frank wrote the most exciting music for the character of Catrina, a sort of bridge between the living and the dead. It was sung by Gabriella Reyes, who I'd heard in Florencia en el Amazonas and Ainadamar at the Met, two other contemporary Spanish-language operas they've done recently. Don't be too alarmed that she's being typecast - - she's also sung Mimi and Musetta in La Bohème in the house and other standard rep roles elsewhere. She sang and you knew you were at the opera! Here she is having a moment. Stephanie and I loved how she pounded her stick on the floor (clearly written into the score, it was doubled in the orchestra):
Her character was having a diva trip, the writing was florid, forceful, and full of fire. She was a real scene-stealer, everything sprang to life when she was onstage.
Which brings me to the bad news. The opera itself was sort of dull, there's not a lot of forward movement or dramatic tension. Stephanie saw the primary problem being that the two lead characters are prevented by having any connection to each other - - Rivera isn't allowed to touch Kahlo since she's from the land of the dead and this distances the story from the audience.
Director and choreographer Deborah Colker did a great job of enlivening the show. Her biggest innovation was adding a lot of extraneous dancing by creatures from the underworld (they made me think of zombies, they made Stephanie think of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz).
The design of the show (sets by Jon Bausor, costumes by Bausor and Wilberth Gonzalez, lighting by Adam Silverman) was amazing, directly modeled on paintings by Rivera and especially Kahlo. It was meaningful and gratifying to see these indelible images used so thoughtfully in the show.
Unfortunately the staging and design felt like smoke and mirrors. The opera itself it a little flat in terms of its drama. Let's say it got to third base - - which is better than striking out, right? We had four or five young women next to us who maybe had never been to an opera before and they seemed to love it. Stephanie wondered if they thought this is what an opera is. Clearly it IS an opera but it doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to the pieces we think of, the classics. Which is a good thing, right?
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