Won over by Golijov

Ainadamar
Birmingham Symphony Hall

Der Rosenkavalier
Royal Festival Hall

In a series of concerts in Symphony Hall with the perhaps unlikely title Passion from Birmingham, Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar was given a semi-staged performance with the cast that made the bestselling DG recording three years ago. It’s repeated at the Barbican. With few genuine expectations and a fairly large dose of prejudice, I have to admit that the 80 minutes the piece takes were mesmerising, though I suspect that that might not happen a second time. The Argentinian composer operates in what is invariably called an eclectic idiom, and uses it to serve a strongly political and humanitarian agenda, with religious overtones — are they different from undertones? In this work, more a cantata than an opera, we have the story of the murder of Lorca, but the main character is Margarita Xirgu, one of his collaborators, who tried but failed to get him to leave Spain before he was killed by falangists. The opera’s title means ‘Fountain of Tears’, and it employs means that are instantly recognisable as Hispanic — it’s in Spanish, translated by the composer from the text that David Hwang presented him with.

Symphony Hall was the ideal place for its realisation, with an excellent amplification system — everything receives this usually dubious benefit, even the malevolent cockcrowing of Lorca’s killer, the main male voice, and sparingly but shatteringly employed: Jesús Montoya made a bigger impression with fewer notes than any other singer in opera that I can think of. The central grieving but strong and resolute figure of Margarita gets an equally cogent rendering from Dawn Upshaw, who has progressed from a rather insipid routine operatic star to a performer of shocking intensity — I would love to see what she would make now of a more traditional great operatic role.