WNO’s ‘Florencia’: the Amazon and Magic of Marquez

For Washington audiences, “Florencia in the Amazon,” the season-opening offering of the Washington National Opera which debuts Saturday, Sept. 20, will be something new and different, the first-ever production here of this singular work by composer Daniel Catan.

For WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, however, who is directing, the project was practically something of an old home-week effort, a way to return to a work she had first directed in its 1996 debut at the Houston Grand Opera.

At the time, “Florencia in the Amazon” was the first ever Spanish-language commission by major American opera companies. The Cincinnati Opera was the other participant.

“It was a very challenging, original work, of the kind people had not heard or seen before,” Zambello said. “I wanted to return to the work, to look at it with fresh eyes and insight. We had this wonderful, lush and new work by an American composer, Daniel Catan, and we had a great libretto, by Marcela Fuentes-Berain. And, then, there was Marques.”

That would be Gabriel Garcia Marques, the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist, a giant figure in Latin American and world literature. The opera was based very loosely on several of his works, most notably “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

One look at the plot, and you can almost feel the longing of lovers trying to find each other in the course of time and separation, a feeling aided and abetted by the magical realism atmospherics and the landscape surrounding a journey on the Amazon River. That’s what Florencia, a famous opera singer, is doing as she embarks on a river journey and a return to her native Brazil, all the while searching for her long-lost lover of long time ago, a butterfly hunter—yes, there’s that—who has disappeared into the jungle. Along the way, there are forces of nature—heat, storms, the river itself and a cholera outbreak, which besets the travelers on their way to the capital, where Florencia will sing. Their guide? Rilobo, a mystical river creature.

“It’s very much guided by the spirit and writing of the magical realism of Marques,” Zambello said. “We went to Colombia back then and had an opportunity to meet the man, and, of course, Colombia was very different in those days. He was very courtly, kind and gentle — a fascinating man — a little elfish, almost. He was very excited about the project and offered some of his own ideas. It was an amazing experience. We went to him by helicopter.”

As for this new production, Zambello said, “I think it will be a very different sort of experiences for Washington audiences. We’ve tried to expand the horizons, not just with this, but our new opera initiatives, an expanded focus on young audiences.”

We’ve already seen newer operas—“Moby Dick” is an example—in which the libretto, not usually one of the highlights of classic opera, with the exception of at least three of Mozart’s operas, and some of Wagner, has become if not literary, certainly very readable, because read you must. “Florencia” is sung in Spanish, with English subtitles.

The two-time, Grammy Award-winning American soprano Christine Goerke will star as the famed Florencia. She was last seen at the WNO in the 2008 production of “Elektra.” A rising star, Carolyn Kuan, will make her WNO debut conducting. Norman Garrett is Riolobo, Andrea Carroll is Rosalbo, Patrick O’Halloran is Arcadio, Nancy Fabiola Herrera is Paula, Michael Todd Simpson is Alvaro and David Pittsinger is the Captain. The design team includes Robert Israel, sets; Catherine Zuber, costumes; Mark McCullough, lighting, and Eric Sean Fogel; choreography.

“Florencia in the Amazon” will be performed at 7 p.m., Sept. 20 and Sept. 22; 7:30 p.m., Sept. 24 and Sept. 26; 2 p.m., Sept.28 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.