Monday, August 28, 2023

Opera!

"She’s been an opera buff all her life, she said, beginning with 'Porgy and Bess' and then moving on to such favorites as 'La Bohème' and 'Carmen,' which she just saw at Santa Fe Opera.

In the mid-1980s, when she was in Washington, D.C., working on immigration legislation, she frequently took the train to New York to attend performances at the Metropolitan Opera — sometimes two in a day — thanks to a nephew who worked for the company and had access to a box.

The showcase was the first time she’d heard any of Benavides’ opera, though, and he suspected it was the first time it had fully registered on her where its focus lay.

'From the first time I told her about the idea, her response has always been, ‘Oh, that’s great that you want to make an opera about Bobby Kennedy.’ I told her over and over again, it’s not about Bobby. It’s literally called ‘Dolores’!”

~ Joshua Kosman

"Dolores,’ an operatic work-in-progress, illuminates the history of California farmworkers"

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/classical/opera-dolores-huerta-west-edge-18301559

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