Track Listing

1. Preludio De Agua Y Caballo
2. Balada
3. Mariana, Tus Ojos
4. Bar Albor De Madrid
5. Desde Mi Ventamna (Aria A La Estatua De Mariana)
6. Muerte A Caballo
7. Balada
8. Quiero Arrancarme Los Ojos
9. A La Habana
10. Quiero Cantar Entre Las Explosiones
11. Arresto
12. La Fuente De Las Lagrimas
13. Confesion
14. Interludio De Balazos Y Lamento Por La Muerte De Federico
15. Balada
16. De Mi Fuente Tu Emerges
17. Tome Su Mano
18. Crepusculo Delirante
19. Doy Mi Sangre
20. Yo Soy La Libertad

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3246 in Music
• Released on: 2006-05-09
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
This unique, 80-minute opera must be heard. The title means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic and refers to the place in Granada where Federico Garcia Lorca was executed by Fascist soldiers in 1936. The work opens in a theater in Uruguay in 1969. As the actress Margarita Xirgu, who collaborated with Lorca in the 1920s and '30s, is about to go on stage, she recalls memories of him and his death and the survivor's guilt she feels. Musical images take us back as well. The sounds of hoofbeats, a fountain, and gun shots punctuate the otherwise beautiful, tonal, highly Spanish-influenced score, filled with flamenco and rumba rhythms. The vocal lines are all highly singable as well as dramatic. The work is mostly scored for women's voices: Margartita, sung by Dawn Upshaw; Lorca himself, sung by Kelley O'Connor; Nuria, Margarita's student, sung by Jessica Rivera. There is also an ensemble of women's voices that do most of the work. Margarita dies just before going onstage. The trio for her, Nuria, and Lorca is about as beautiful as anything you'll ever hear. "What a sad day it was in Granada / The stones began to cry" is a refrain that recurs throughout the opera, and the whole piece is sheer poetry. This is stunning. --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews

Operatic cartoon
The rhythms are exciting, some of the orchestration is clever and well-done. Listening to the CD overcomes some of the problems of a live production: achieving a balance between acoustic and amplified music, overcoming the lack of contrast (almost all women's voices) and utter lack of dramatic movement (nothing happens). The voices are good and perform the music well. Still, there is not much here for them to work with and the result is mediocre.

The music, while catchy at first, is simple, undeveloped and repetitive. The story lacks drama and movement. It is essentially a reverie on Lorca, not the man, his poetry, his sexuality, his art or politics but just some tired ahistorical cliches about freedom and fighting facism climaxing in his assassination. And just like the music, if you missed the obvious don't worry they will play it again, and again, and again.

I'm sorry there is just nothing new or interesting here. The music and story are simple cliches in a slick packaging for shallow mutli-cultural consumption. No difficult ideas to promt thought or conversation, no dissonant music to interfere with light entertainment. It would make great background music for an animated cartoon. But I expect a little more from something that aspires to call itself opera.

Oh, my!
If you consider eating at Taco Bell as dining on fine Spanish cuisine, this is for you.
If you enjoy hearing every Spanish musical cliche known to man, and then some, this is for you.
If you like sound effects, MTV-style musical glitz and are an avid follower of Spanish novellas, this is for you.
If the music of Soler, Falla, Albeniz, Granados, Gerhard, Ginastera, John Adams--and yes, also the Gypsy Kings--is unfamiliar to you, this is for you.

Five stars for deception.

Keeping Lorca Alive
This is a very remarkable opera -the first one- by Osvaldo Golijov. Ainadamar means 'fountain of tears' in Arabic, and it is also the name of an ancient well near Granada, where the poet Federico García Lorca was killed by the fascists in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The opera is divided in three parts called images: 1. Mariana, 2. Federico, 3. Margarita. Mariana referes to Mariana Pineda, one of the plays Lorca wrote that tells the story of Mariana Pineda, a revolutionary martyr of the 19th century. The second part is about Lorca, from the moment he refuses to go to Cuba with Margarita (and save his life), to the moment he is arrested and killed. The last part is about Margarita Xirgu at the end of his life, when she is keeping the history and the legend of Lorca alive by representing his plays.
In the style of Golijov, this music merges different styles (Jewish, Muslim, and Spanish music). Ruiz Alonso (the arresting officer) is a flamenco singer (Cante Jondo), and Margarita Xirgu is the soprano and Osvaldo's muse Dawn Upshaw. There is a good balance among the three parts of the opera and the three main characters in it (Lorca, Xirgu, and Nuria, a student who will maintain Lorca's life and art alive).
This CD comes with an introduction by Alex Ross and a synopsis by Peter Sellars. The libretto was written by David Henry Hwang in English, and Golijov translated it into Spanish. This is very odd, since the music is sung in Spanish and usually the librettos are written in the language the music is going to be sung. Also, the CD contains pictures of Golijov, Upshaw (2), Lorca, Xirgu, and two stage pictures of a live representation. The CD cover (as you can see) represents Margarita Xirgu in tears in the style of Lorca's drawings. It was designed by Hisako Moriyama. This CD is a world premiere recording by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra directed by Robert Spano and I strongly recommend it to opera aficionados, classical music lovers, and anybody interested in Lorca and the Spanish Civil War. Thanks for reading.
P.S. If you like my review vote YES. You can read all my other reviews if you wish to. I modestly write them to help people form an opinion about movies, music and books, but if nobody reads them (if you don't vote I do not know if you did) there is no point in writing them