Florencia en el Amazonas Transmission Transcript
READ: Villazón Show Intro
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Hello, hello, everybody. ¡Hola a todos! I'm Rolando Villazon, and I'm very happy, very excited, as you can see, to be your host for today's presentation of Florencia en el Amazonas. I knew the late composer, Daniel Catán, quite well, a wonderful person and artist and my fellow Mexican who once said that it was his artistic mission to create a new tradition of opera with a Latin American perspective. It was also his dream to see Florencia en el Amazonas have its Met premiere. So wherever he is, he must be dancing out of happiness. This is the first opera sung in Español, in Spanish, here in a hundred years. ¡Que bonito! The opera centers on a mysterious Brazilian diva, Florencia Grimaldi, played by one of today's great divas, the Mexican American Sonora, mia carissima, Ailyn Pérez.
Florencia is struggling traveling incognito on a steamboat along the Amazon, returning to her homeland in search of her long lost lover, Cristóbal, a butterfly hunter who has disappeared in the jungle. Florencia's destination is Manaus, in the heart of the Amazon, where she plans to sing at its legendary opera house and find her dear Cristóbal. Florencia's fellow travelers include a young couple in search of their destinies, an older couple who have lost their passion and Riobolo, a mystical figure who communicates between the human and the natural worlds. For this story, composer Daniel Catán was inspired by the magical realism of the legendary Colombian author and Nobel Prize winner, el fabuloso, Gabriel García Márquez, whose student, Marcela Fuentes-Berain, wrote the libretto.
Director Mary Zimmerman has embraced this supernatural, jungle-centric and in this new wonderful production, you will see dancers and puppets bring the vibrant world of the Amazon into life. So everything is ready. Met music director, the great Yannick Nézet-Séguin is about to go to the pit. Here it comes, Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas.
STAGE MANAGER: Maestro to the pit, please. Maestro to the pit.
INTERVIEW: Villazón w/ Ailyn Pérez
AILYN PÉREZ: ¡Mira, Papageno!
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: ¡Ah, Ailyn!
AILYN PÉREZ: ¡Rolando!
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: You were fantastic. Wonderful performance.
AILYN PÉREZ: I love you so much.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: I'm so happy for you.
AILYN PÉREZ: Thank you.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Oh, what a great part for you. So you are a diva, giving life to a diva, Florencia.
AILYN PÉREZ: Amazonica diva. Mexicana
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Que bonita.
AILYN PÉREZ: Esta compositoro maravilloso.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: How is it for you to—I mean, what is Florencia for you?
AILYN PÉREZ: Florencia is a key to the heart of Mexico, is a key to the heart of all of Latin America. It's a key to the heart of the giants, literary giants like Gabo and Marcela Fuentes-Berain and it just did a wonderful job in showing us up to this point where each person is, and the storm is about to bring us together in a way.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yeah.
AILYN PÉREZ: In a rebirth way, and I think the message is therefore so powerful, the way we connect to nature and to each other. It's very special.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Amazing. And you know, I knew very well Daniel Catán. I've recorded his music. I love his music. How is it for you to be performing his melodies?
AILYN PÉREZ: It's a dream. It's like he knows what we can do and how we can sing.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Always.
AILYN PÉREZ: Every seven characters is like a lied, lied, lied, important words, important sounds and beauty and the depth of the story he tells. It's joyful. It has a sense of humor. It's melancholy. But there's always light. You walk alongside fear, alongside death and in the light, never darkness.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes.
AILYN PÉREZ: Just when you think it's dark, nature hugs you and says—
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Boom, out into the light.
AILYN PÉREZ: Yeah.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And in Spanish. I mean, you perform in Italian, in French, in Czech, but now in Spanish. How is it for you to be singing in Español?
AILYN PÉREZ: (In Spanish)
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Oh, how beautiful, because it's not only Spanish. It's Latin American Spanish.
AILYN PÉREZ: That's right.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: It's Mexican Spanish.
AILYN PÉREZ: Yes. Thank you.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Is it easy? I mean, how do you feel singing in Spanish?
AILYN PÉREZ: I'm enjoying it, except my mom is always like, what did you say, mija, what did you say? When I go for the high notes, she says, I'm sorry, what. So we're working very hard, and we had a wonderful Peruvian diction coach, a young artist as well here which I just think is so nice.
We have Guatemalteco, Uruguayans, we have Venezuela. We have representation from a lot of the Latin American —
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Todo la familia latinoamericano.
AILYN PÉREZ: Yeah. Yeah. It's so beautiful.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And you know what, today this performance is being seen in Mexico City.
AILYN PÉREZ: Yes.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And in Auditorio Nacional, which is the biggest of the cinemas in all the world presenting the HD presentations.
AILYN PÉREZ: Yeah.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: So would you like to say a couple of words to our compatriotas in Mexico, por favor?
AILYN PÉREZ: (In Spanish)
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Now you're making me cry, Ailyn.
AILYN PÉREZ: (In Spanish)
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: You are so amazing. I remember so fondly —
AILYN PÉREZ: Romeo and Juliet.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Romeo and Juliet in Salzburg, your debut.
AILYN PÉREZ: With Yannick too.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: With Yannick.
AILYN PÉREZ: It's so full circle, amazing. That's why. Thank you for embracing me as an artist, as a human being and empowering so many artists as you perform and as you speak. You just—you really uplift us. Thank you, Rolando.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Thank you. It's so easy to love you because you're adorable. You're an amazing artist, amazing singer, amazing person. Get ready for the second act.
AILYN PÉREZ: I know. It's going to be dramatic.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes. Toi, toi, toi for that last —
AILYN PÉREZ: Are we alive or are we dreaming?
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes.
AILYN PÉREZ: What's real?
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Bravissima. Te quiero.
AILYN PÉREZ: Te quiero mucho mas.
READ: Throw to Tape
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: As I mentioned earlier, Florencia en el Amazonas is inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, a perfect fit for director Mary Zimmerman and her wondrous theatrical vision. We spoke to Mary recently about how she did it.
ROLL-IN B: Mary Zimmerman Feature
MARY ZIMMERMAN: So Florencia is about an opera singer, a very famous grand diva, who is making a trip up the Amazon to the opera house at Manaus. So it almost entirely takes place on the river, and we kind of think of a river in the jungle voyage as being quite closed in, but in fact, the river is very, very wide at a lot of parts of it. But what is notable is it sort of narrows and widens and narrows and widens. And so, we basically have these two, I think, very beautiful, emerald green walls, but one of them can move in and out and away and towards us, so that we're changing the shape of the river on the floor of the stage.
So I wanted to put the emphasis a little bit more on the landscape, more than on the little boat itself. You have all the flora and fauna of the Amazon to choose from, and so we do have various creatures that float on by, or fly on by.
But the costumes for the animals are kind of glamorous, I would say. We have a school of piranha, which are mentioned in the libretto. They're sort of dressed as ladies in sort of red ball gowns, but they also have fins and they have large fish on their heads, and they have sort of these panier of fish. They maintain kind of human characteristics as well. We have a single heron, who's played by a very tall dancer, a leggy dancer, because I guess I think of a heron that way, and a little flighty hummingbird. We wanted the animals to be mostly realistic, but with, I guess, a bit of whimsy or graphic quality or exaggeration. So there are sort of exaggerated takes on water lilies, and butterflies, of course.
We also have dancers and some actors that are dressed as waves, as the water itself, and there's a large storm where people fall off the boat. And my idea is those dancers actually pick them up and twirl them around, and twirl them away up into the water, that they're seized by the water sort of literally. There's this sort of gorgeous, I guess we could call it exotic, setting on the Amazon, but what's really happening is the little drama on the boat.
I hope it's just a dazzling journey, but that it also is a journey into the interior for the audience. Most of us have some loss that we've figured out how to reconcile, or also to understand that not everything is reconciled. Not all threads tie together, you know, at the end, or they may in our imagination through art, and our participation in creative acts, is how we sort of can make up for the wounds and holes in our lives.
INTERVIEW: Villazón w/ Gabriella Reyes & Mario Chang
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Mary says her theatrical mottos is never a dull moment, and she's certainly living up to that with this production. And now I get to speak with the young lovers of Florencia en el Amazonas, soprano Gabriella Reyes, who sings Rosalba, and tenor Mario Chang, who plays Arcadio. Mis caradisimos, it's fantastic what you're doing on this stage vocally and also with your characters. Gabi, what can you tell us about this beautiful character, Rosalba?
GABRIELLA REYES: Bueno, Rosalba is this amazing young woman. She has all of the—she has all the tenacity and the dedication and the perseverance to do her career, what she was put on this earth to do, which she thinks is to write. But really what she needs to do is learn this lesson that she needs to let love enter, and so she looks up to Florencia Grimaldi, and honestly it's a really great—it's a great character to play because I get to play it with Ailyn Pérez.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yeah. Beautiful, and then comes Arcadio. What can you tell us about Arcadio and the relationship with Rosalba?
MARIO CHANG: Well, Arcadio is the nephew of the captain. You can see he's been trying to take over his place.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: He wants to be the apprentice.
MARIO CHANG: He wants to be a pilot. You can see in my shirt those little planes. You will see it from the HD. But he wants to fulfill his dream. He wants to be a pilot. And then he sees Rosalba, and then he sees in her a person with a lot of passion for what she wants to achieve. And I think in the first moment they met, that's what draws him to her, her passion to write and to fulfill her dream. So yeah, and then the second act, wonderful things are going to happen. You'll see.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Oh, yeah. Don't say it. Don't say it.
MARIO CHANG: Oh, yeah. Wonderful things. No, I won't say it.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Gabi, your relationship with this opera goes a couple of years back. Tell us about it. I mean, this music is fantastic, but—
GABRIELLA REYES: Oh, this music feels like home, to be honest.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yeah?
GABRIELLA REYES: So the first time I sang this music was for the Met National Council auditions back in 2017.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Wow.
GABRIELLA REYES: I sang Florencia's Act II, the top of Act II aria. And it was the first thing I ever did with the Met orchestra back in—or just, yeah, 2017. And to be able to be here now, a couple of years later, is such a full circle moment.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Perfect.
GABRIELLA REYES: Yeah.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: It's perfect. It's so wonderful for your voice.
GABRIELLA REYES: Thank you.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: You're so amazing.
GABRIELLA REYES: Oh, thank you.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And Mario, you're of course at home with Verdi, with Puccini and now with Catán. How do you relate these great masters with the music of Daniel?
MARIO CHANG: Well, I think Daniel is incredible the way he writes. He lets you sing. He lets you put a little piece of your soul in the music.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes.
MARIO CHANG: You can hear a lot of people singing the same thing. But it's one of those artists that let you perform and let you make the piece yours.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes.
MARIO CHANG: I think it's very comfortable. It's very full, very—
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: It's comfortable, but it's also very difficult.
MARIO CHANG: Oh, it is really difficult. Yes.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: You really need the great technique.
MARIO CHANG: Yes.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: You both have to perform this music.
MARIO CHANG: Overall we have to be in control.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yes.
MARIO CHANG: We need to, like, pace ourselves and be very careful.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And in order to let you remain in control, I will let you go to your dressing rooms to get ready and concentrate for your second act, very wonderful second act of Florencia en el Amazonas. Bravissimi.
GABRIELLA REYES: Muchísima gracias.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Gracias.
MARIO CHANG: Gracias.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: In Spanish.
GABRIELLA REYES: Gracias.
MARIO CHANG: Gracas. Ciao.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Ciao, ciao, ciao. Ciao.
READ: Neubauer / Toll / Throw to Break
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: The Met's Live in HD series is made possible thanks to its founding sponsor, the Neubauer Family Foundation. Digital support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Met Live in HD series is supported by Rolex. Today's performance of Florencia en el Amazonas is being heard over the Robert K. Johnson Foundation Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, and we will be right back after this break.
INTERVIEW: Villazón w/ Tom Lee & Blair Thomas
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Welcome back. Audiences have been delighted by the whimsy and magic of the puppets in today's production. So now I have the great pleasure of speaking with their creators, Tom Lee and Blair Thomas. Caballeros, how wonderful to have you here. Thank you very much.
BLAIR THOMAS: Glad to be here.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yeah. So, you know, the puppets, of course, in these productions are so important and so wonderful. Tell us a little bit about the process, how did it go during the rehearsals.
TOM LEE: Well, we're part of Chicago Puppet Studio, and we've been working with Mary Zimmerman for many years, and one thing that's great about Mary is that she thinks of the puppets as part of the total design of the opera. It's not just one thing. But it's in the costumes. It's in the set. It's in the performances.
BLAIR THOMAS: Yeah. She looks to find moments that can come alive within the story through the puppets, so that makes it a very exciting opportunity to come up with the ideas that you see in this performance.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Indeed it is exciting. And Tom, this caballero, this little monkey, chocolos, compadre, so almost steals the show. I mean, he has such a wonderful moment in the opera. Look at him.
TOM LEE: Yes.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: So tell us how it works. How do you—
TOM LEE: Well, this is a classical marionette designed by our studio for this opera house, and as you can see, he has about 16 strings.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Wow.
TOM LEE: If you take this one right here and pull it, then you can hold his arm and pull his arm that way and his leg, and it's quite like an instrument.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Okay.
TOM LEE: In fact, every night we almost have to play it just like the orchestra plays their strings and all of their instruments.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: What's his name?
TOM LEE: His name is Miguel.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: ¿Qué pasó, Miguelito?
TOM LEE: Oh, bien.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Look, I have here one for my eyebrow.
TOM LEE: One string on your eyebrow, yes. We all need such a thing.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And tell me, how does he grab the champagne? I mean, you must be a little bit tipsy now, Miguel.
TOM LEE: Oh, yes. He's very, very drunk. He has a special magnet in his hand right here which he can use to grab anything which has metal, and that's how we do that special trick.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Okay. So I have a little banana for you as a present, Miguelito. Let me give you the banana. Did I do it right? Oh, yes, we did it. Blair, how much was it, the process in these puppets are based on real animals, on cartoons, on imagination, how is it?
BLAIR THOMAS: Well, it was very much on real animals that were existing in the Amazon. And so we got a lot of images and we started to work with—we tried to figure out like how can you create the menace of the crocodile. And so you only see a portion of the crocodile as it slithers across the stage in the most simple way, but creating that same kind of ominous quality.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Amazing.
BLAIR THOMAS: Yeah.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: And really, every one has its own way of moving, dancing and, I mean, the singers must love to be with the puppets, no?
TOM LEE: Oh, they're in love with them. Yeah. They have so much fun. And even Maestro, when Maestro saw the monkey for the first time, he said, oh, he's just like me, a rascal.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Well, we are also loving having you in this show and looking and enjoying at these beautiful puppets. So thank you very much. Congratulations, and toi, toi, toi for the second part of Florencia en el Amazonas.
TOM LEE: Thank you, Rolando.
BLAIR THOMAS: Thank you. Thank you very much.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Gracias, caballeros. Ciao.
BLAIR THOMAS: All right. All right. Ciao.
READ: PSA / Fundraising / Throw to HD Season Preview
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Spellbinding puppets, dancers costumed as fish and birds, incomparable performances by some of the world's top artists. Today's performance is surely capturing the imaginations of cinema audiences all over the world. But the magic of the Met on screen cannot equal the magic of the Met here in the opera house. Nothing, nothing compares to the experience of opera live in the auditorium. I can tell you I sang Papageno in The Magic Flute on this stage just last night, and the connection between the performers and the audience here inside the house is just the absolute greatest feeling in the world. So please, please, please come to the Metropolitan Opera house or visit your local opera company.
Today's performance of Florencia en el Amazonas is the third Met premiere this season. For opera to thrive, it is essential for companies like the Met to present new and recent work alongside the old classics that we all know and love. But grand opera, whether new or old, is very expensive and ticket sale cover only a fraction of the costs.
The Met relies on opera lovers like you to help make up the difference. If you're able to make a donation, please visit metopera.org/membership or call us at 1-800-MET-OPERA. You can also text HDLIVE to 44321 to make a contribution. We thank you in advance for your support of the Met.
The Met's Live in HD season is in full swing, bang, bang, bang, and there are six more movie theater presentations coming up. Here's a preview.
READ: Throw to Tape
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: As we just saw in that preview, the Met's next Live in HD presentation will be Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco on January the 6th. The opera is perhaps most famous for its unforgettable and touching chorus, "Va, pensiero." Here is an excerpt of the great and unique Met chorus performing this classic moment.
INTERVIEW: Villazón w/ Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: The Live in HD presentation of Nabucco will be on January the 6th with Georgian baritone George Gagnidze in the title role, opposite Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska. But now, back to the world of Florencia en el Amazonas, and I'm so, so, so, so pleased to get to speak to the Met's music director, mon chère, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, here in his dressing room, Chère Maestro, Yannick.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Oh, chère Rolando.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Quel plaisir. It's wonderful to have you. You have said that Florencia en el Amazonas is full of poetry. I'm sure everybody is listening in the text, but you mean more than that.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Yeah. I think the orchestration is only poetry. We start on a voyage. We start immediately I think the first beats, the marimba and also the steel pans, which are very unusual for an orchestration in an opera, they send you on a voyage and it never stops. It's like the boat on the Amazon, and all the colors of the orchestrations, the birds and the woodwinds.
We get also the sounds of the boats with the brass and a lot of singing lines, of course, that the doubling in the strings go with everyone on stage. So yes, there's poetry and it's like a big poem as an opera. This is what I feel.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Is it Latin American? Daniel Catán wanted to have a Latin American feel.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Absolutely.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Wonderful.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: I feel like the spice, you know—
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Yeah.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: I feel like Latin American is spicy. So I think the spice is all in the orchestration, spicing the vocal lines.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Every musician, every singer adores to work with you, and I am sure you are having fun conducting this astonishing group of singers, starting with Ailyn Pérez, but everybody. It's just amazing, isn't it?
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: When they arrived in the building, everything turned out with light. I think everyone, from Ailyn, you're right, but also Gabi and also Mario and everyone just brought such love and I think this is also part—you know, I feel as a Quebecois, Rolando, that I'm Latin of the north. So this way of loving what we do and loving each other resonates very much with me. So yes, I'm having a great time.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Hallelujah. The Met orchestra—
STAGE MANAGER: Maestro to the pit, please. Maestro to the pit.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: —is the glory of the glory of the opera world.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Yeah.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: How do the musicians react to this music?
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: They love—one of the things that make me the most proud and that shows how great these musicians and these chorus members are is that they love new repertoire. They dedicate their heart to it and they don’t think, oh, we don’t know this piece or we're going to invest less. They invest maybe even more and that makes me really proud and show how great they are.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Well, I would love to continue talking to you. But they have just called you. So the second act will begin. You're amazing. Thank you for bringing in Florencia to the Met and thank you for your wonderful art, Yannick. Bravissimo.
YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN: Thank you, Rolando. We love you.
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Merci.
READ: Throw to Act II
ROLANDO VILLAZÓN: Bravissimo. At the end of the previous act, a violent storm has been raging. The steam ship has washed up on shore, and Alvaro has been swept overboard. But this is a story of magic and transformation, as we will see in the second act of the opera. That's it for me. I will now go and join you to enjoy the glorious conclusion of this marvelous opera, Daniel Catán's, Florencia en el Amazonas.