Thirty years after its Houston world premiere, the late Daniel Catán's irresistibly lush, über romantic grand opera, Florencia en el Amazonas, has now received its second complete audio recording.
Released by its co-commissioner, Houston Grand Opera, on its own label, this high-resolution recording of the company’s 2019 revival is available as a two-SACD set and in various download formats.
The Spanish-language libretto, based on Gabriel García Márquez's much heralded excursion into magical realism, Love in the Time of Cholera, was created by Marcela Fuentes-Berain at Márquez's request. Thanks to Catán, the results are as operatic as it gets, with such a rapid succession of melodic solos, duets, trios, and ensemble pieces that you may need to come up for air.
Although there are a few unexpected titters from the audience when Fuentes-Berain compresses some of Márquez's carefully crafted magical twists and turns into slam bam surprises, the opera has been crafted to suspend disbelief as it carries you away with its exotic colors, exuberance, frequent dramatic outbursts, and intense rapture.
The same kind of fundamental plot incredulity encountered in such operatic classics as Mozart's Così fan tutte and Beethoven's Fidelio surfaces in Florencia. Anyone who has wondered how Fiordiligi and Dorabella could not recognize their lovers by their voices alone when the latter donned fake beards, or how Leonora managed to sing soprano while successfully disguising herself as a man, will wonder why would-be biographer Rosalba (Alicia Gianni) is unable to recognize that she's on the same Amazon-bound ship as woman she claims to know everything about opera singer Florencia Grimaldi (Martínez).
One also wonders how the mythical Riolobo (Norman Garrett) seems so real to the other six characters, or how the married Paula (Nancy Fabiola Herrera) and Álvaro (Thomas Glass) can so quickly fall out of love, and then in again. Of course, in an opera of magical realism, where pages and pages of writing must be compressed into a few lines, anything is plausible.
Certain facts are incontrovertible. Director Francesca Zambello and conductor Patrick Summers have not only engaged a superb cast but have also succeeded in getting the very best out of them. The singing, both by the soloists and the Houston Grand Opera Chorus, is superb. The orchestral playing, too, is excellent; the two orchestral interludes and frequent instrumental excursions are lushly romantic.
Although Martínez initially approaches some of her high notes from below, quickly pushing up to the intended note, her singing is spot on in much of Act Two. Her final softly voiced high note is a special thing of beauty.
Ultimately, Florencia en el Amazonas will become many an opera lover's guilty pleasure. It delivers all the melodic effulgence and romantic excess that every hopeless romantic has ever savored in Puccini through Strauss. Compressed into less than two hours, with most of the filler removed, it arrives in the sonic equivalent of three-strip Technicolor.
Unless you're under doctor's orders to stick to Bach, indulge. By all means.
