Ainadamar at Los Angeles Opera

Margarita Xirgu has spent half her acting career in exile, mourning Federico García Lorca, the dear friend whom she couldn’t convince to flee Franco’s reign of terror. Lorca was once on the verge of writing his way into a new Golden Age in Spain. But dictators have no use for poets.

Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados leads this major company premiere. Grammy winner Osvaldo Golijov’s dramatic, flamenco-inspired score meets a poignant libretto by David Henry Hwang in what the LA Times calls “one of the most moving and meaningful operas of our time.” Ana María Martínez takes center stage as Lorca’s muse Margarita Xirgu, recounting the poet’s life and his last days in the Spanish Civil War. Daniela Mack steps into the role of Federico García Lorca, the man whose pen proved just as dangerous as any pistol.