At first glance, the story behind the opera “Lorca, Child
of the Moon” seems to have a fairy-tale ending.
A labor of love first developed as a series of workshops, it
gained support and grew into a full-scale opera that will premiere
on March 17 at Freud Playhouse. But to attribute all of its success
to pure luck would be to grossly misinterpret the amount of labor
put in by many individuals and organizations to finally bring it to
that level.
As a doctoral student, Ian Krouse, chair of the UCLA Department
of Music, began a collaboration with the Bilingual Foundation of
the Arts to periodically compose music for various plays written by
the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.
“That’s how I learned Lorca’s plays from the
inside out and came to love them,” Krouse said. “Each
time we did one of those plays, we mutually became more ambitious
““ more singing, more music, more choreography.”
Eventually, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts’
co-founder Carmen Zapata realized that Lorca’s life could be
captured and performed by means of a full-length opera. With the
efforts of Margarita Galban in writing the libretto and Krouse in
composing the music, as well as the assistance of numerous grants
and private donations, Zapata’s dream began to become a
reality.
In spite of widespread enthusiasm for the project and successful
trial workshops, the opera “Lorca” was never fully
completed, and ended up being shelved for about 13 years before
Krouse decided to return to “Lorca” 19 months ago.
“It’s basically been in a dormant state, with those
who were involved wondering if we would ever come back to it again
or what its fate would be,” Krouse said. “(Then) it
occurred to me that the time had come to go back and revisit that
project.”
Director Galban and Krouse were fortunate enough to resume
working with many of the same artists that had been involved with
“Lorca” since its original conception in 1984 and with
its first trial run in 1987. For Krouse, the challenge has been
finding a way to finish up the opera in a style complementary to
the bulk of the music he composed as a 28-year-old doctoral
student.
“I’m a very different person now than I was
then,” Krouse said. “There was a concern on my part
that I would find it difficult to go back, but it all worked out
quite well, and I felt quite comfortable writing new material as my
48-year-old self that would somehow fit with the music that I
already wrote so long ago.”
“Lorca, Child of the Moon” is a fusion of both the
poet and playwright’s life and his most famous works,
depicting Lorca as he steps in and out of the fictional world of
his own creation. Galban also directly incorporates the recurrent
symbolism of Lorca’s poetry into the opera itself, allowing
Lorca to be driven and inspired by La Muerte, La Luna and Fate.
UCLA alumna Mari Sandoval personifies these Spanish themes in
her choreography for “Lorca” by utilizing dancers
onstage to represent each of these ideas throughout the entire
opera. Sandoval herself portrays La Muerte, adopting a style of
choreography that takes its inspiration from many types of
traditional Spanish dance from Lorca’s time, including
variations on flamenco. She attributes the power of
“Lorca” to affect its audience to its original concept
and inspiring music.
“It’s so powerful that it’s hard to hold back
as a character,” said Sandoval. “Sometimes during
rehearsal I have difficulty being La Muerte; sometimes listening to
the music is so overwhelming that I give in to the
music.”
Krouse strove to compose music that not only incorporated
traditional Spanish rhythms and styles, but also captured
Lorca’s unique voice as a poet.
“It would have been very easy to simply write in
recognizable Spanish styles, but I never did that, nor wanted to do
that,” said Krouse.
“I wanted to find a way to evoke not just Spain, but
Spanish music in the New World, and not only of today, but of
yesterday. I wanted to evoke those things in a new personal way. It
was a difficult process, but I found the right tone for the
piece.”