Another day of summer humidity. Clare went off early to a meditation workshop at Ararat Baptist Church on Whitchurch Common, leaving me to cook lunch. Having prepared chorizo y haber tapas yesterday, my task was to make a prawn, spinach and mushroom risotto. I lacked white wine to use, so first went to visit Tesco's to buy some, and spotted a bag of shallot onions to bring back and use. They are small and fiddly to prepare, but I like the flavour. M4 traffic through Newport was so slow it took Kath and Anto an extra hour to arrive. I drove to Whitchurch to fetch Clare at one and they arrived just after I returned. Both the chorizo versions met with approval. Disappointingly the risotto was slightly overcooked. I'm more used to cooking paella rice than the risotto kind.
After lunch we went for a walk down to the river. The water at Blackweir Bridge was busy with dozens of children playing. There was a Traveller family having a good time. One of their horses was in the river and another on the bank, being made a fuss of. It was good to see. As we walked down the path that leads to the river, between us we picked up two dozen discarded plastic bottles and cans in four hundred yards, most of them dropped along the edge of the games pitches yesterday evening or this morning. The few ill space rubbish bins were not full, having been emptied at tea time yesterday.
At six, Kath drove us to the Millennium Centre to join other guests at an opera friends' reception and talk by WNO artistic director Aidan Laing about this evening's Cardiff première of the opera 'Ainadamar' by Argentinian author Osvaldo Golijov. We were entertained with wine and nibbles in the backstage area where rehearsals had been carried out, honoured by the presence of the Spanish Consul, and the renowned artistic director of the opera, choreographer Deborah Colker.
It's set around the murder of Frederico Garcia Lorca at the start of the Spanish Civil war, reputedly at a place outside Granada called 'Ainadamar' meaning 'Well of Tears'. It looks back to the murder in Granada of Mariana Pineda, an early 19th century female champion of libertarian thinking, about whom Lorca had written a play. The actress Margarita Xirgu who had played her part, fled Spain after Lorca's death and continued to play Mariana in memory of Lorca in Latin American theatres. Nuria, her protegée is told the story, representing young inheritors of creative artistic freedom.
It's a powerful piece of theatre incorporating flamenco dancing and canciónes, with stunning use of lights and visual projection in place of scenery. Striking use is made of projected quotations from the speeches of extreme nationalist politicians and generals, urging the extermination of socialist republican enemies. I have seen all these in print, this last week, reading 'Battle for Spain'. None is this is fictional. It reveals the kind of irrational hatred which populist demagogues can stir up, when power without accountability is wielded in a corrupt unjust society.
The singing was outstanding. Lorca was played by Hannah Hipp, a contralto with a powerful versatile voice, sounding very much like a man's in her lower range. It was only when she soared effortlessly to her high notes without breaking into falsetto that the ambiguity was dispelled. Nuria was sung by Julieth Lozano Rolong, the Colombian soprano winner of the audience vote prize in 'Cardiff Singer of the World' this year.
The opera lasts just eighty minutes with no intermission. It's relentlessly intense holding attention, start to finish. It's about the costliness of claiming freedom, freedom to be creative, freedom to be oneself, more than it is about political, social and economic freedom. It's also about the true prophetic vocation and how it lives on through stories told of heroic people and the sacrifices they make.
We were home by nine fifteen, sitting in on the patio in the dark, drinking wine, eating nuts and fruit, enjoying the mild night air, still thrilled by the experience shared by the four of us. All, late to bed after a wonderful evening out.
