THE GOOD NEWS:<\/p>\n
An old art form gets a new life that reflects the diversity of America today.<\/em><\/p>\n While an elderly man rests his ailing body in bed, his son sits on a stool beside him holding a guitar in his hands. He begins to play. Above the plucked notes, the son\u2019s voice rises, singing a Mexican folk ballad,\u00a0\u201cEn Fr\u00e1giles Alas\u201d (\u201cOn Fragile Wings\u201d), to his bedridden father. The song tells the story of the death of a caterpillar, the son explains. Then, he clarifies: \u201cActually, it\u2019s about the life of a butterfly.\u201d<\/p>\n His father slowly awakens to the tale of transitions, transformations, and new beginnings. He looks around, disoriented and confused; he can\u2019t remember the names or faces of his immediate family members. But the old man remembers the song flowing from the guitar. It\u2019s the same song he used to sing to his son when he was younger, he says, connecting the present moment to his distant past. Through the nostalgic song, the son signals to his father: \u201cAs you once cared for me, now I\u2019ll care for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Emotions ran high at a recent performance of \u201cCruzar la Cara de la Luna\u201d (\u201cTo Cross the Face of the Moon\u201d)\u00a0at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts in Northridge, California. Onstage, baritone Gregorio Gonz\u00e1lez performed the heartfelt ballad discussed above to tenor Daniel Rodr\u00edguez, who played his father, Laurentino. Surrounding the duo were a dozen sharply-dressed mariachi players \u2014 their wide-brimmed sombreros propped in front of them as they played their violins, guitars,\u00a0and trumpets. As Gonz\u00e1lez sang his song of the mariposas, the mariachi joined in with their instruments and voices, filling out the rich harmonies.<\/p>\n Jos\u00e9 \u201cPepe\u201d Martinez\u2019s mariachi opera premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2010, and it has been performed across the United States and in Paris to rave reviews. It\u2019s been called the \u201cimmigration opera,\u201d telling the stories of a Mexican man who leaves his family behind to cross the barren landscape of the desert on a journey to find work in Texas. It\u2019s an emotional story that\u2019s relevant today.<\/p>\n But the Southern California premiere was especially poignant.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the audience were 58 DREAMers, all student recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, along with more than 100 of their family members.\u00a0<\/p>\n All the emotions that were going on in that room tonight \u2014 that was a taste of what the immigrant community is facing.<\/p>\n Among the DREAMers in attendance were 18-year-old Carlos Martinez and 23-year-old Sarai Arrona, both students at California State University, Northridge. Martinez, a freshman studying art education, says this performance of \u201cCruzar\u201d marked the first time he had ever been to an opera. Arrona, who is studying early childhood development, says that while she had heard mariachi music her whole life, she had recently become a bigger fan of the genre after watching the 2017 Oscar-nominated Disney movie \u201cCoco,\u201d which heavily features Mexican folk and mariachi music.<\/p>\n When Martinez, Arrona, and the other DREAMers and their families were recognized from the stage before the performance, the crowd roared and cheered in response. The audience\u2019s enthusiasm was a resounding show of support for a group of individuals whose lives and futures are currently held in complicated legal limbo, caught in the crossfire of contentious, hotly debated national politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just a day before the performance of \u201cCruzar,\u201d Congress failed to pass a bill that would have secured the futures of DACA recipients.\u00a0<\/p>\n For many immigrants who were brought into the U.S. illegally as children, President Obama\u2019s 2012 executive order enacting DACA was a lifeline. It meant that after filling out some paperwork and meeting certain educational requirements, they could study and work in the country they had called home most their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in the fall of 2017, President Trump enacted his own executive order phasing out the DACA program. Since then, two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to continue renewing DACA applications. But until the case is ruled on by the Supreme Court or until Congress passes a bill making DACA the law of the land, DREAMers like Martinez and Arrona face an uncertain future.\u00a0<\/p>\n For many DREAMers in the audience at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (\u201cthe Soraya\u201d for short), the story of \u201cCruzar\u201d was familiar: It was their story.\u00a0<\/p>\n The opera depicts the life of Laurentino, a Mexican man who, in the 1960s, left his wife, Renata, and young son, Rafael, behind in Mexico to find work in the United States. Missing her husband and longing for a united family life, Renata employs a \u201ccoyote\u201d smuggler to take her and Rafael across the border to Texas.<\/p>\n The arduous journey proves too much for Renata, who falls ill and dies in the desert. The coyote leaves her body there and takes the crying, traumatized Rafael back to Mexico. In that instant, a family is divided, and a father and son are separated.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCruzar\u201d unfolds in two settings: modern-day Houston where Laurentino lies dying, surrounded by his American-born son, Mark, and 1960s Michoacan, Mexico, where Laurentino has flashbacks of his happy life as a young man with Renata and Rafael. Throughout the opera, the migration of the monarch butterflies serves as a metaphor. Like the music of the mariachi, butterflies can\u2019t be constrained by borders or walls.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll I had to hear was \u2018mariachi opera\u2019 and I was in,\u201d says the production\u2019s director, Dan Guerrero. \u201cThere are some gigs that are very special, and this is one of them. I\u2019m always trying to do something with meaning, something that will educate as well as entertain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Guerrero says the opera is an opportunity for audiences to discover there is more to mariachi music than what they may have experienced over margaritas and enchiladas at their favorite local Mexican restaurant.<\/p>\n \u201cA true mariachi ensemble is full of serious musicians,\u201d he says. \u201cThey all play several instruments. They all sing. And they are masters of their craft.\u201d<\/p>\n Mariachi music originated in western Mexico in the mid-1800s. It was also the product of global migration; it is a combination of Mexican folk idioms and theatrical Spanish orchestra music.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitl\u00e1n, the band that performed at the Soraya in \u201cCruzar,\u201d is one of the world\u2019s oldest and most esteemed mariachi ensembles. A decade ago, Anthony Freud, then the general director of Houston Grand Opera, attended one of Mariachi Vargas\u2019 performances in Houston. The rapturous performance gave him an idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n Freud was struck by how much Mariachi Vargas\u2019 performance reminded him of opera. There was the big full-throated singing, the inherently story-driven music, and the heightened emotional drama of the mariachi\u2019s sound. He called the leader of the Mariachi Vargas, Jos\u00e9 \u201cPepe\u201d Mart\u00ednez, and asked him to write an opera.\u00a0<\/p>\n To create the story for \u201cCruzar,\u201d Mart\u00ednez collaborated with opera director Leonard Foglia, who wrote the lyrics and text for the piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe opera world is expanding in every way,\u201d Foglia explains. \u201cThere are jazz operas and tango operas and operas that use electronic sounds in very contemporary ways. There need to be even more. Let\u2019s tell stories. And more importantly, let\u2019s tell stories through a musical vernacular that is not Western or European.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Foglia points out that for most of opera history, stories have been told through European idioms. \u201cIt didn\u2019t matter where the story took place. It could be in Tahiti or Argentina or China, but it was going to be told through that European tradition. That I think is part of the breakthrough of \u2018Cruzar.\u2019 It says \u2018not only are your stories important, your music is important too.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When most people hear the word \u201copera,\u201d they immediately picture 19th-century Italian grand opera. There are sopranos and tenors singing in period costumes backed by a classical orchestra in the pit. The singers are mostly white. The audience is mostly white too, and more often than not, they\u2019re older.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, as Foglia points out, even in the staunchly conservative, traditional world of opera, things are changing.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2014, composer Laura Kaminsky wrote \u201cAs One,\u201d a transgender woman\u2019s coming-of-age story. That same year, composer Kamala Sankaram premiered \u201cThumbprint,\u201d which told the true-life story of Pakistani rape survivor and activist Mukhtar Mai using Hindustani musical traditions melded with European ones. In 2017, Sankaram also composed an episodic\u00a0virtual reality horror opera called \u201cThe Parksville Murders.\u201d<\/p>\n In Los Angeles, MacArthur \u201cgenius grant\u201d awardee Yuval Sharon\u2019s wildly inventive opera company \u201cThe Industry\u201d has moved operas out of the concert hall and into the streets with pieces like \u201cHopscotch,\u201d which featured opera singers on motorcycles, rooftops, and inside limos, and \u201cWar of the Worlds,\u201d which in 2017 unleashed singing aliens from outer space in parking lots across downtown L.A.\u00a0<\/p>\n And since he and Mart\u00ednez wrote \u201cCruzar\u201d in 2010, Foglia has been commissioned to write two more mariachi operas. What was once an anomaly is rapidly becoming its own beloved genre.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started out in the opera world 15 years ago, everyone was terrified of the new or the different,\u201d Foglia says. \u201cBut I\u2019ve watched this transformation. More and more, opera audiences are wanting the new. What is acceptable inside an opera house is changing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And as that changes, audiences are discovering that the elements that Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries loved about the art form are the same that draw in more diverse 21st-century audiences today. Regardless of the language or musical style, when a gifted singer communicates universal emotions through music, hearts are stirred.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the lobby of the Soraya after \u201cCruzar\u201d concludes, the special guest DREAMers and their families gather for a photo together with the opera\u2019s directors. There are smiles, but there are also tear-stained cheeks.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat got to me was the part where they just left Renata in the desert,\u201d Sarai Arrona says, hugging her mom tightly, drying her eyes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very emotional,\u201d Carlos Martinez agrees. \u201cAt the same time, it gave a perspective to people. I feel like sometimes people don\u2019t realize that students like us come from families that went through what happened in the opera. People see DREAMers, undocumented people, or just people from immigrant communities, and they just see them as someone who has a different status. They don\u2019t really realize that they\u2019re human as well. All the emotions that were going on in that room tonight \u2014 that was a taste of what the immigrant community is facing. Stories like that touch home.\u201d<\/p>\n And, he adds, the power of the mariachi\u2019s sound enhanced the opera\u2019s impact. When 12 beautiful, strong voices sing harmoniously in full force, the sensation is spectacular.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe music blew me off my seat,\u201d Martinez beamed. \u201cThis was my first opera, but it won\u2019t be my last.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top illustration and share image by Tatiana Cardenas.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE GOOD NEWS: An old art form gets a new life that reflects the diversity of America today. While an elderly man rests his ailing body in bed, his son sits on a stool beside him holding a guitar in his hands. He begins to play. Above the plucked notes, the son\u2019s voice rises, singing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}