In Thursday’s (5/21) New York Times, Michael Cooper writes from Havana, Cuba, during rehearsals for the May 21 world premiere of Cubanacán: A Revolution of Forms, an opera by Cuban composer Roberto Valera and American librettist Charles Koppelman. The opera chronicles Fidel Castro’s decision to turn “Havana’s most exclusive country club into an art school complex, if not quite as he had planned. Some buildings were never finished, and left to crumble…. The story it tells … is ambiguous…. ‘This opera must reflect that moment of enthusiasm, creative enthusiasm, that we had in the early ’60s,’ [Koppelman] said, noting that it was a period that included the establishment of the National Ballet of Cuba and the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba as well as a sweeping literacy campaign. The opera is being performed on a temporary stage in front of the arches of the school of visual arts [with] an orchestra of 54, a small chorus and a cast of young Cuban singers…. Its score combines Cuban rhythms and lyric, operatic passages with modern edges.” Says Valera, “In this school we trained more than 90 percent of the most important artists in Cuba in every art—music, fine arts, drama, dance.”
Posted May 22, 2015
