Last night my wife and I saw Gabriela Lena Frank’s 2022 opera, El último sueño de Frida y Diego at Lyric Opera, our last opera of the 2025-2026 season. We were drenched by the sudden downpour in downtown Chicago during the walk from our parking garage to Lyric’s home at Civic Opera House.
The picture above gives you a good idea of what the opera looked like. The production design drew heavily from the works of both Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. I thought the concept and book were great, the production good, and the staging a throwback to the way operas were staged 50 years ago with the performers standing in lines across the stage and singing to the audience. Some of that may have been deliberate.
I found the music unengaging. In a sort of revival of opera seria it was cerebral and static, maintaining a slow, stately andante and similar vocal and orchestral densities throughout. The final scene, which should have been an emotional highpoint, maintained the same, detached tone.
My wife asked a good question: “Is this magical realism?” I think it sat right on the boundary of both, leaning more into fantasy. In magical realism the supernatural is ordinary and expected. In fantasy it is more extraordinary and used as a sort of intellectual device.
All in all it was a decent conclusion to the season but won’t become one of my favorite operas.
Kyle MacMillan, Chicago Sun-Times
Bringing together piano, celeste, gongs and myriad other percussion with traditional orchestral instruments, Frank draws forth a rich palette of sometimes hard-to-identify, discordant sounds. The music can be spooky and foreboding with rumbling marimba runs, shrill piccolo blasts and alien-sounding trumpet lines or moving and reflective with gently cascading harp or searching clarinet.
Intrinsic to this opera is the first-rate Lyric Opera Chorus, which is almost a constant presence, either seen on stage or heard offstage, helping to shape the opera’s reverential, almost sacred feel at times. Sometimes these singers are part of the action as cemeterygoers or underworld denizens, but other times they act as a kind of Greek chorus, prodding or commenting on all that is happening.
Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune
This review is more about the revival of interest in Frida Kahlo than it is about the opera itself.
Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Music Review
El último sueño de Frida y Diego has much going for it: Frank’s compelling score, a strong cast, and a striking, at times visually stunning production. All elements came together Saturday to create a vivid, colorful and impressive night of theater.
Frank’s flowing, restless music is powerful, often haunting and eminently listenable. Even when the stage action was static or dragged, the crystalline timbres and iridescent scoring coming out of the pit consistently beguiled the ear.
And yet, paradoxically, engaging as Frank’s music is, there is little that sticks in the memory (an issue I’ve also had with Frank’s orchestral music). More crucially—and Cruz’s libretto bears some blame for this—there are no true musical peaks or standout solo moments for the singers. Yes, there are solos and a late quasi-duet for Frida and Diego. But they appear and go quickly in an efficiently scrolling theatrical canvas that doesn’t pause long enough for the singing to make a strong impact. At times Frida y Diego feels less like an opera than a Nilo Cruz play with intriguing incidental music.
Once again, Mr. Johnson clearly saw the same opera I did.
