Guitarist Del Monte’s ‘Flamenco Opera’

By Ross Boissoneau

What??
A flamenco opera, premiering in February???

Indeed, Strings By Mail artist Adam Del Monte has the creds and the mojo to make it happen, and he did!

He teaches flamenco and classical guitar at USC, where he has been a member of the studio guitar department faculty since 2000. He recorded and performed the featured flamenco guitar part in the double Grammy award winning opera Ainadamar, composed two flamenco guitar concertos, performed with flamenco singer Enrique Morente and the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and with Lole y Manuel. Del Monte was commissioned by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet to compose a “progressive” flamenco piece, entitled “Cambio de Aire” and collaborated with Yusef Lateef and the Atlanta Symphony at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta GA.

So perhaps it’s only natural that he’s composed a flamenco opera.

Thing is, as far as he knows, no one has ever written a flamenco opera before. Which begs the question: Why do it? And what the heck is a flamenco opera anyway?

As regards the first question, Del Monte says the seed was sown by his wife during a visit to her homeland of Argentina. “She asked if I’d ever thought of writing an opera,” he says. “So I kind of went with it.

“It’s not being able to say no to your wife,” he adds with a laugh.

Del Monte came up with a synopsis, taken from the fact that Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 – the day before Columbus set sail for the new world. He originally intended for a friend to write the libretto, but when that fell through, he took it upon himself.

As for the second question, it is an opera that incorporates flamenco music. He knew it couldn’t be only flamenco, and what he came up with in Llantos 1492 is more a hybrid.

“For a year I researched that period in history,” he says, starting with the arrival of Jews in Spain in 500 BC. They spent 15 centuries in Spain, becoming part of the identity of the Iberian Peninsula. “The Visigoths, Muslims, etc. all arrived as conquerors. The Jews arrived as refugees or migrants.”

His story includes the presence of Jewish and Sufi mystics, the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, the massacre of 3,000 Jews by a 12th century Granadan vizier, and an edict that all Jews were to be deported from Granada and the whole of Spain (“I used that as an aria,” Del Monte says). And he had his story. “I cherry-picked several things and put them in.”

Per Del Monte’s libretto, the story unfolds in the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition. Jewish lawyer and mystic Youssef Biboldo challenges the machinery of intolerance when a petty noble named Alfonso falsely accuses a group of Roma children of imagined crimes. Biboldo defends them, outwitting the system in a moment of fleeting victory.

Alfonso’s defeat sets off a spiral of revenge, forcing Biboldo, his family, and their allies to flee into the mountains of Granada, where Moors still hold sway. Biboldo’s daughter Raquel defies her father to love Mariano, a Roma singer whose flamenco voice carries both seduction and sorrow. Other stories that unfold in the opera are those of Pedro de la Cruz, a secret Jew burned alive in an auto-da-fé; the Romas, maimed and enslaved for refusing to bow; and the Jews, exiled with nothing but their names and prayers.

Del Monte stitches these stories together with a musical tapestry heavy on flamenco rhythms and operatic voices. “There’s opera singing, harmonies, orchestral (music), even serial and a little bit of jazz. As a composer in the 21st century I have the luxury of looking in the rearview mirror.

“I took a prayer from the Jewish liturgy. The four-part harmony is a nod to Bach. I filtered it through flamenco. The challenge was to make it all work,” says Del Monte.

Now all he had to do was get it performed. Initially he and his wife, pianist Mercedes Juan Musotto, premiered a concert version of the opera with five singers at the 2019 Tucson Desert Song Festival. Now the full presentation of Llantos 1492 is set to be premiered by Opera Southwest on February 16, 19, 21 and 23 at the Albuquerque Journal Theater. Tickets are available here.

What’s next? First, he is looking forward to the performance. “All my energy has been on the opera. A lot depends on how it’s received,” he says. But he is not waiting on the reception to consider whether to do it again. “When and how to get into the sequel – I have a clear idea of what it could be.”

Del Monte plays Erez Perelman guitars, a Negra and a Blanca and a classical. He uses Augustine Classic Black medium/low tension strings.

Ross Boissoneau is a regular contributor to Something Else! Reviews, Northern Express and Local Spins. He’s written for the All Music Guide, Jazziz and Progression Magazines, and is a member of the Downbeat Critics Poll.