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Florencia en el Amazonas (1996) by Daniel Catán
Inspired by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez
Sung in Spanish with English supertitles

Octavio Cardenas, director
Wilson Southerland, conductor

Florencia en el Amazonas concerns what its Mexican-born composer described as “the journey to transcendent love…with all its intricacies, subtleties, wretchedness, and glorious happiness,” with a cast of sympathetic and generally believable characters. Garcia Marquez’s story employs magic realism, a narrative technique that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. Catán’s setting of this intriguing story paints the characters in richly varied music of ravishing beauty, particularly for the protagonist, Florencia, a legendary but intensely private opera singer harboring a burning desire to find her long-lost lover Cristóbal.

“The passengers of El Dorado find out that life and love, just like the waters of a river, wait for no one and always moves forward,” says Octavio Cardenas. “As they embark in a trip through the magical landscape of the Amazon, they discover the meaning of living in the moment and that happiness is made of fleeting moments of happiness and sadness. Sometimes what we yearn for may be closer than we think.”

Performances
Thursday, March 30 | 7:30pm
Friday, March 31 | 7:30pm*
Saturday, April 1 | 7:30pm*
Sunday, April 2 | 2:00pm*

*There are Pre-Performance Talks in ESM 120 (Ray Wright Room):
   -  Friday, 3/31, 6:30pm
   -  Saturday, 4/01, 6:30pm
   -  Sunday, 4/02, 1:00pm

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