By Nestor CASTIGLIONE

When Osvaldo Golijov’s star first came to prominence in the firmament of contemporary music, I have to admit to having become very excited. Hearing of the massive success in 2000 of his La Pasión según San Marcos, which had earned widespread critical and public acclaim, I became intensely curious to know the work of this Argentine composer. Knowing that he was a fellow Latin American only intensified my interest. In time I was able to obtain a recording of the aforementioned work and practically drove in breathless haste back to my house in order to listen to it. As soon as I stepped in through my door, I ran to the stereo and slipped the disc into the CD tray. The music began playing – and my excitement over this new discovery, which had only moments ago been almost overwhelming, very quickly dissolved into disappointment.

Over the years I have listened and re-listened to various song cycles, chamber works, and orchestral works of his – but to no avail. How this music – dull in texture, enmeshed in clichés – elicits such rapturous praise is something that continues to leave me puzzled.

His one-act opera “Ainadamar” (Arabic for “Fountain of Tears”), which was admirably performed last Sunday by USC Thornton Opera, has done nothing to change that impression. Revolving around the lives of Federico Garcia Lorca and the actress Margarita Xirgu, an actress who was a close friend and collaborator of the poet’s, it attempts in its 70-odd minutes to offer easy answers to complex issues.

One wonders, too, whether Golijov and his librettist David Henry Hwang considered for very long the ambiguities of not only Garcia Lorca’s life, but also that of the political situation he found himself mired in. Would they be surprised to know, for example, that among the Spanish right wing there was widespread support and sympathy for Garcia Lorca? That the poet counted friends and patrons among many high-level Falangists and that they offered him support and shelter during the Spanish Civil War? With prior calls to “revolution” in the opera’s second part still ringing, Xirgu sings of her regret for not bringing the poet with her to Cuba while her company toured one of his plays. Did Golijov and Hwang forget or ignore the unhappy fates of Virgilio Piñera and Reinaldo Arenas – Cubans who were among the finest writers of the 20th century, who were both openly gay and, as a result of that and their art, found both of their careers and lives subsequently crushed by the revolution that augured the Castro regime?

Stage director Ken Cazan did the best he could with this flimsy score, arguably outdoing the music itself. The starkness of the stage design along with the dazzling screen projections – shifting one moment from water droplets evoking the “Fountain of Tears” of the opera’s title to droplets of blood to the countless stars of the night sky – made for a powerful impression.

The singers of the USC Thornton School were uniformly excellent – especially tenor Marco Alonzo who in the the role of a Falangist officer handled his melismatic singing line with enviable bravado and ease – as was the orchestra conducted by Brent McMunn.

But what of “Ainadamar?” A recording of the opera won a Grammy a decade ago. So who can say? But to my ears the music sounds like a Putumayo compilation meets watered-down Gypsy Kings meets rejected numbers from “West Side Story.” Worse: it reduces the endless spectrum of grays that make up so vital a part of personal and public life and reduces it to the sentimentality of cheap sloganeering. Golijov and Hwang owe Garcia Lorca better.

  Nestor CASTIGLIONE