Last Sunday there was an addition to West Edge Opera's usual three-opera summer festival in the shape of a preview with orchestra of Dolores, a forthcoming work about labor & civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, with music by Nicolás Lell Benavides (who is related to Huerta) & libretto by Marella Martin Koch, the finished version of which is scheduled for West Edge's 2025 season. Instead of their usual venue, the Scottish Rite Center on Lake Merritt in Oakland, the Opera put the preview in the Taube Atrium Theater at the War Memorial Complex in San Francisco; not a theater I'm fond of, but I wanted to hear this so I went.
There were some speeches beforehand, as was to be expected, first from the Opera's Artistic Director, Mark Streshinsky, then from Benavides, both of whom thanked the sponsors & artists who helped make the work possible, & finally, in an exciting & previously unannounced appearance, Huerta herself; I wonder how many other opera subjects have seen themselves on stage? The 93-year-old is still looking to the future (past today's gloomy American situation), still an activist, still in touch with what's going on politically (as shown especially by her sharp emphasis on Senior when she mentioned the unifying, liberal politics of Bobby Kennedy Senior; Junior, of course, is far from the inspiring progressive his father was). She ended by paying tribute, not just to the on-going struggles of the workers who help feed America, but to the power of music to feed our souls.
(Not a very good photo, but that's Huerta in the turquoise jacket, with Benavides on her right-hand side & tenor Alex Boyer behind her.)
The preview lasted about an hour (which, I'm guessing, is roughly half of what the finished work will be); the first half hour was mostly complete & then we had some nonconsecutive scenes & solos from the rest, with the omitted material summarized in projections behind the performing space. The singers were in a row in front of the orchestra (which was led with her usual aplomb by Mary Chun) & there was no staging. The backdrop was a changing series of photographs, many of them taken during the events portrayed by photojournalist Ted Streshinsky (father of Artistic Director Mark, who had gone with his mother to his father's archives in the Bancroft Library to choose images, some of which had not been published before).
The action centers on the United Farmworkers' grape boycott & strike of the late 1960s, leading up to the assassination of one of their first major political supporters, Bobby Kennedy. The opening music thrums ominously as Huerta, joined by Cesar Chavez & Filipino farmworker activist Larry Itliong, urge their fellow workers to strike for decent working conditions. The music often seems on the verge of turning into a march, but is it a march of the strikers or of their gathering opponents? The chorus chants Strike! in Spanish & English. The sequence explodes with the aesthetic power & conviction of a Soviet silent film montage.
Huerta is sung by mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra, the quality of whose voice, as clear as a mountain stream, so strong, so pure, so beautiful, became not just a means of characterization but a moral signifier. By contrast we had an insidiously seductive turn from none other than Tricky Dick (as he is named in the program), sung by high tenor Samuel Faustine. It would never have occurred to me to cast that voice type as Nixon (maybe I have listened to Nixon in China too often), but the decision was as brilliant as it was unexpected, & the historical Nixon is a rich enough character to accommodate many interpretations. Our high tenor Dick does not attack the Farmworkers Union or the grape boycott directly; instead he delivers a lyrical paean, sometimes heading into falsetto territory, on the delights of eating grapes, to a lilting accompaniment that carries at its heart a suggestion of the sound of a decadent Weimar cabaret, another unexpected but plausible aspect of Nixon (how we have fallen! nowadays our villainous politicians are bloated cartoons, devoid of the Shakespearean depth & complexity of Nixon).
A contrasting tenor sound comes from Alex Boyer, who manages to sound like both an experienced politician & a genuinely warm person as Robert Kennedy. He gives a speech of thanks after winning the California primary; this was the one scene that I felt went on a bit too long. I assume the purpose here is to give us a sense of him not just as a coalition builder, but one whose coalition included usually overlooked citizens, but as the thanks to various groups roll on it began to seem mostly like a boilerplate political victory speech. But of course it is difficult to tell how this scene would play out in the context of the full opera.
Cesar Chavez, sung by the warm bass-baritone Jesús Vicente Murillo, is given slower, lower music; he ponders how a man should behave – "a man should sacrifice himself for others" – suggesting a thoughtful man, but also one with something of a messianic complex, & one who perhaps has some resistance to a woman leader (in a brief scene, it is clear that he has ignored a decision Huerta had made). He unilaterally makes the decision to go on a hunger strike, which of course attracts much attention & sympathy, but also makes him somewhat above the movement, with a Christ-like aura of sacrificing himself for others.
Shortly after Kennedy's victory in California, the news comes that he has been shot; Juan Romero, an immigrant Mexican busboy from the hotel, sung with spiritual intensity by tenor Sergio González, describes bringing room service to Kennedy, who treated him with a respect he generally did not see in this country. Huerta receives the news of the shooting as she is boarding a plane; she prays to the Virgin (as we in the audience know, unsuccessfully) for his life, & she reflects on her own life so far.
To fill out the cast list with those I haven't mentioned yet: baritone David Castillo is a passionate & powerful Itliong, bringing searing conviction to his calls for a strike, & soprano Chelsea Hollow lends grace to a number of smaller roles, most particularly Helen Chavez. The chorus, which lends so much power to the strike scenes, is made up of Andrew Green, Julia Hathaway, Alexis Jensen, Michael Kuo, Richard Mix, & Leandra Ramm.
I was chatting briefly with Benavides before the show started, & realized later that instead of blathering about whatever I was blathering about, I should have asked him to sign my program (just another opportunity missed in a lifetime of missed opportunities. . . ), because the afternoon felt like a bit of a landmark. Dolores's words & music can only increase in richness & complexity when the whole thing is completed, & I am very eager for its local premiere as part of the 2025 West Edge season. As I left the theater & walked towards my BART station, I passed a bus covered with an ad supporting the unionization of Starbucks workers, because the fight is not finished, the fight is never finished, the struggle never ends. . . .
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