The Live from the Met opera “Florence in the Amazon,” inspired by the magical realism of famed Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, will be shown at the Lakeside Little Theatre Monday and Tuesday, December 18 and 19 at 4 p.m.
This new production is directed Mary Zimmerman and features Ailyn Pérez, an American operatic soprano of Mexican descent, who heads the cast under the musical direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Composed by Daniel Catán (1949-2011), “Florencia en el Amazonas” is a musical tribute to the magical realism literary movement, and the first opera in Spanish to be presented at the Met in New York in almost a century. It also marks the debut of a Mexican author in the repertoire of the prestigious U.S. opera house. With a libretto by the poet and playwright Marcela Fuentes-Berain, made at the request of García Márquez, this new and fascinating production is the third title of the Live from the Met’s 2023-2024 season to hit the new enlarged screen at Lakeside Little Theatre.
“The composer’s supernatural story about an opera diva who searches the Amazon for her butterfly-catching lover will usher in a magical new era of Latin American art at the Met,” writes Matt Dobkin in an article for the Met. The charmingly improbable plot of “Florence in the Amazon” alludes to García Márquez’s masterful works, in particular “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
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