Kudos to Ravinia for assembling the same forces—including soprano Dawn Upshaw, conductor Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus—as can be heard on the spectacular just-released recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s new opera “Ainadamar” (Deutsche Grammaphon). Argentine-born and of Eastern European descent, Golijov has been able to synthesize a wide variety of music traditions into an original voice that is far more than the sum of its parts and which speaks to musicians and audiences alike. (The Chicago Symphony, in hiring Golijov as a new composer-in-residence for next year, announced that the CSO will perform this work as well, but Ravinia is scooping them with this area premiere.) “Ainadamer” is Arabic for “fountain of tears” and the name of an ancient well near Granada where poet Federico Garcia Lorca was killed in 1936 by Fascist Falangist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. That incident is told in sometimes ferocious flashbacks in a libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang while Golijov’s music movingly evokes Spanish flamenco, folk traditions, Arabic chant and musical cues, descriptions of which often surrounded the highly musical and mystical Lorca’s manuscripts. (Dennis Polkow)
Wed/14 8pm, Ravinia Festival, Lake-Cook and Green Bay Rds., Highland Park, (847)266-5100. $10-$30.
By Way of Party: A Preview of SPRUNG at Sleeping Village This Saturday, Sleeping Village will become a petri dish for the femme and queer-led performance extravaganza the Fly Honey Show. In the lab will be three mad geniuses of party chemistry.
