El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego: The Met Opera (12A)

On May 30, the Metropolitan Opera’s 2025–26 Live in HD season comes to a close with a live transmission of American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera – El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego).  A magical-realist portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It has a libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Fashioned as a reversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, the story depicts Frida, sung by leading mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, leaving the underworld on the Day of the Dead and reuniting with Diego, portrayed by baritone Carlos Álvarez.

During the celebration of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), surrounded by candles and the fragrance of marigolds, the great muralist Diego Rivera longs to see his deceased wife Frida Kahlo once more. Catrina, the keeper of the souls, approaches Frida in the afterlife. She explains that Diego desperately needs his beloved wife as the end of his life approaches. The famously feuding pair briefly relive their tumultuous love. They embrace both the passion and the pain before bidding the land of the living a final farewell.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met-premiere staging of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego. It is a “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) that “bursts with color and fresh individuality” (Los Angeles Times). The vibrant new production, taking enthusiastic inspiration from Frida and Diego’s paintings, is directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker.

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