Eileen Perez is an American traveling soprano. Her work often takes her to the world’s leading opera houses, where she performs a steady stream of standards by European composers.
The premiere offers her something different: a chance to play a role closer to home.
Florencia en el Amazonas recently opened at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a company to which Pérez frequently returns. She takes on the role of Florencia Grimaldi, a soprano and woman on a journey.
“She’s a mysterious woman, a singer who returns home to Manaus to do a reopening show at the theater, but she’s really hoping to find her lover, Cristobal,” Perez told NPR.
The story takes place in the early twentieth century, at a time when Florence conquered European audiences with the power of her voice. On her way to fame, she chose to give up the love of her life.
Perez described the character as having a unique talent. “She was given the gift of singing, and then she realized she got sucked into the trip and never came home,” she said.
Latin America trip
To reconnect with her roots, Florencia returns to South America, traveling up the Amazon River on a steamboat.
Accompanying her on the journey is the ship’s captain, sung by Greer Grimsley, who knows the river like the back of his hand. He wants to pass this knowledge on to his nephew, Arcadio, Mario Chang, who dreams of seeing a wider world.
Among the passengers is a feuding couple, mezzo-soprano Nancy Fabiola Herrera and baritone Michael Cioldi, trying to revive the feeling of fading love. Rosalba, played by Gabriela Reyes, wants to write a biography about the great Florence.
Navigating the difficult waters of desire is a big part of the story. Riolupo (Mattia Olivieri) embodies the spirit of the river and attempts to guide the characters toward their destination. Nature has other plans. Mary Zimmerman’s exuberant production, both eerie and menacing, exemplifies its power.
“I was swept away by the beauty,” Perez said of the dancing birds and piranhas sharing the stage with the characters on the boat. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the orchestra through rich musical textures occasionally punctuated by tropical birdsong.
Florence in the Amazon region They originally met in the mid-1990s. Jointly commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and production houses in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Bogotá, it was the first major Spanish-language work to be supported by companies in the United States.
Composer Daniel Katan was the driving force behind the project. The Mexican creative team includes script writer Marcela Fuentes Perrin. She remembers Catan as an artist trying to find new ways to tell Latin American stories.
“Daniel was absolutely obsessed with putting our language and music into opera,” Fuentes Perrin said.
Her relationship with the artistic form was different. She’s a screenwriter, a craft she learned from Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize winner from Colombia. It was Gabo, as his friends knew him, who proposed to her the idea of writing an opera based on his novels.
She remembers telling him: “No, Gabo, I don’t write opera.” “He said: ‘Yes, you can. I will teach you how.’ Then he brought Fuentes Perrin and Catán together. Since its premiere in 1996, Florence It has been shown in South America, the United States and Europe, but the full production has never been presented in the country that claims it as its own.
That changed earlier this year when it was shown in Mexico City for the first time. It was a posthumous tribute to Catán and García Márquez, both of whom had died years earlier.
Melodies of belonging
Ken Howard/Meet Opera
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Met opera
And now Florence in the Amazon region It made its way to the Met, the first Spanish-language opera to be performed on stage in nearly 100 years. In an art form steeped in tradition, Eileen Perez says contemporary work takes a long time.
“There is sometimes a language barrier for new opera composers to have this platform,” she explained. “Because you have to have a feeling that it’s going to sell, that it’s going to stick. And how do you know until you invest in it? Don’t do it.”
The Met embraces change with its current season, which blends the classics with works from a contemporary and more diverse group of writers and composers.
The role of Florencia Pérez gives her a rare opportunity to sing in Spanish. As the bilingual daughter of Mexican immigrants, she learned early that language has the power to shape her experience and voice.
“My mom was really hurt because she thought I was yelling or talking back to her,” she said, recalling the tone that would come up in conversations at home, in Chicago, when she was growing up. “But actually, I was using an English accent and I was using it in Spanish. So it sounds rude. It sounds like it.” abrupt. “It looks like you’re yelling at someone.”
Singing in Spanish opened up new expressive possibilities for her.
“I feel like my whole sense of self is transforming,” she said. “I feel grounded in knowing who I am. My worth.”
The theater is one of the places where Perez described feeling at home. Now, as she steps into the role of an iconic soprano reconnecting with her roots, it’s a space where she finds a new sense of belonging.
Florencia en el Amazonas is showing at the Met through December 14. It will be broadcast live in high definition in cinemas across the country on December 9.
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