Hispanic Heritage Month

Antonio Gades’ last choreographed work, Fuenteovejuna, is a signature piece of purity and precision of Spanish dance. Based on a true event that inspired Lope de Vega to write this classic play in 1619, Fuenteovejuna is about the people of a village in Córdoba ruled by a tyrannical commander whose actions of droit de seigneur, violence and abuse engender their intense hatred. Until one day, encouraged by their women, the villagers choose freedom and, armed with farming implements, they take the law into their own hands. When the villagers are interrogated by a magistrate sent by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to establish who was responsible, no one admits to having done anything, each inhabitant only saying “I.” In other words, “Fuente Ovejuna did it.” First performed in 1994 in Genoa, Fuenteovejuna is considered as the ultimate work of Spanish dance. Gades highlights the enormous richness of flamenco and the folklore. The stylised Spanish dance and flamenco serve as a universal story to perfectly tell the story of solidarity.

Louis Langrée conducts the Metropolitan Opera in a performance of Bizet’s masterpiece of the Gypsy seductress, who lives by her own rules, no matter the cost. The opera’s melodic sweep is as irresistible as the title character herself, a force of nature who has become a defining cultural figure. This drama—of a soldier torn between doing the right thing and pursuing the woman that he cannot resist—bursts with melody and seethes with all the erotic vitality of its unforgettable title character. Carmen was a scandal at its premiere and was much denounced in the press for its flagrant immorality. The power of the music and the drama, however, created an equally vocal faction in favour of the work. The composer Tchaikovsky and the philosopher Nietzsche both praised the opera, the latter identifying in the robustness of the score nothing less than a cure-all for the world’s spiritual ills. This performance features Clémentine Margaine (soprano), Roberto Alagna (tenor), and Alexander Vinogradov (bass) and was recorded at the Metropolitan Opera Hall in New York City, USA, in 2019.