This week’s Opera San Antonio production Cruzar la cara de la luna represents at least two firsts for the 10-year-old company: the first Spanish-language opera and first contemporary opera to take the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts main stage.
Cruzar was written in 2010 for the Houston Grand Opera. Its creators, Leonard Foglia and José “Pepe” Martínez, are credited with devising the first-ever mariachi opera, and Foglia in turn credits former Houston Grand Opera director Anthony Freud with originating the idea for combining two art forms known for dramatic emotional intensity.
“The music is very emotional, the stories are usually character-driven and it’s fabulous music,” Foglia said of the similarities between traditional opera and mariachi.
While Martínez’s Mariachi Vargas De Tecalitlán performed for the original production, San Antonio’s beloved Mariachi Campanas de America will join Opera San Antonio onstage for Cruzar.
What is home?
When Foglia set out to write the story for Cruzar, he said he began with one question: What is home?
The answer, it turns out, was complicated. He first spoke with a Mexican immigrant mother and her Mexican American daughters who worked in the Houston opera’s costume shop. When he put the question to them, he said they answered that in Mexico they were considered Americans, and in the U.S. they were treated as foreigners.
But when he asked what mariachi meant to them, they told him, “home.”
Foglia’s scenario takes as its subtext the Bracero Program, in which for two decades in the mid-20th century the U.S. government invited 5 million Mexican immigrants to work in the United States. Only men were invited, many of whom left behind their families in Mexico. Those families established longlasting connections between the two bordering countries.
As stated in the event program, the drama of Cruzar la cara de la luna — which translates in English as “To cross the face of the moon” — follows three generations of the Velasquez family as they are divided by countries and cultures.
“As long-buried secrets are revealed,” Foglia said, the main character “finds himself dramatically reevaluating his own understanding of what makes a family.”
In full traje
E. Loren Meeker, general and artistic director of Opera San Antonio, was involved in Houston Grand Opera’s 2010 production. She said her company is fortunate to have Foglia, the original stage director, in that same role for the new production, along with members of the original cast.
But the local connection is special, Meeker said. She looks forward to seeing the 13-piece Mariachi Campanas de America onstage in full traje as part of the production. “They’re the lifeblood of the piece,” she said.
The company reached out to mariachi education programs across San Antonio, Meeker said, to foster awareness of the upcoming opera and to get students involved. Student groups will be invited to the final dress rehearsal before opening night, and mariachi groups from Lanier and Holmes high schools will play post-show performances on the Tobin Center steps on both nights.
Meeker said from what she witnessed seeing the first productions of Cruzar, the mariachi opera has wide appeal.
“I sat in that audience in Houston and saw all sorts of folks who were experiencing this opera for the first time who had different backgrounds than I do, who were mariachi lovers or opera lovers, and it hit home for everyone,” she said. “It brings joy and it uplifts the soul.”
Tickets for the October 3 and 5 performances of Cruzar la cara de la luna are available through the Opera San Antonio website.