Acclaimed ‘Ainadamar’ comes to LA Opera at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, April 26-May 18

April 26 – May 18, 2025 (Select Dates)

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles CA, 90012

A dance of dictators and poets.

Margarita Xirgu has spent half her acting career in exile, mourning Federico García Lorca, the dear friend whom she couldn’t convince to flee Franco’s reign of terror. Lorca was once on the verge of writing his way into a new Golden Age in Spain. But dictators have no use for poets.

Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados leads this major company premiere. Grammy winner Osvaldo Golijov’s dramatic, flamenco-inspired score meets a poignant libretto by David Henry Hwang in what the Los Angeles Times calls “one of the most moving and meaningful operas of our time.” Ana María Martínez takes center stage as Lorca’s muse Margarita Xirgu, recounting the poet’s life and his last days in the Spanish Civil War. Daniela Mack steps into the role of Federico García Lorca, the man whose pen proved just as dangerous as any pistol.

https://www.laopera.org/performances/2025/ainadamar

“Ainadamar” is an Arabic word meaning “fountain of tears.” It is one of the names of a natural spring located in the hills above the Spanish city of Granada. This is the site where the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was executed in 1936.

Margarita Xirgu, a veteran Spanish actress and Lorca’s muse, spent her career portraying Mariana Pineda in Lorca’s play of the same name. Pineda was a 19th-century political martyr executed for sewing a revolutionary flag against the absolutist Spanish regime with the embroidered slogan “Equality, Freedom and Law.” Mariana Pineda was Lorca’s first theatrical success and a love letter to a woman who pursued her convictions to their ultimate consequences, evoking the color and poetry of Andalusia and especially of Lorca’s own Granada. Lorca asked Xirgu to play the title role at the premiere in June 1927, at the Teatre Goya in Barcelona with scenic design and costumes by Salvador Dalí.

Xirgu fled Spain at the beginning of the Civil War but Lorca refused to leave. His liberal beliefs and open homosexuality subsequently led to his death at the hands of the Falange, the fascist party founded by the son of former Spanish dictator General Primo de Rivera. Xirgu then gave her life to playing Mariana Pineda and to keeping Lorca’s words alive.

Composed by Osvaldo Golijov; Conducted by Lina González-Granados

Sung in Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: approximately one hour and 20 minutes, performed without intermission

https://www.laopera.org/performances/2025/ainadamar