Imagine a land ruled by the military, a land in which people vanished silently overnight and no one dared mention their names. Imagine a time and place where it would take supreme courage just to say your child’s name – when your child is one of the disappeared. That is the military-ruled Argentina of the late ’70s and early ’80s, the main setting of “Los Madres de la Plaza,” a new opera with music by James Haines and libretto by John Rohrkemper, which had its premier at Elizabethtown College last weekend (March 14-15).
As a collaboration involving students, faculty, staff and community members, it was an amazing effort; as a piece of musical drama, it was remarkably, heartwrenchingly effective. The structure of the narrative called for a fair amount of solo recitation as well as dramatic interaction: to the credit of the cast, director Lydia Brubaker and the rest of the artistic staff, the opera, although lasting about 2 and a half hours, remained gripping, though agonizing, throughout.
Knitting the scenes together was the character of Mario Rossini (Layne Zeiner), a desaparecido (disappeared one) who survived (we never find out how), and who serves as our guide into this particular corner of hell. On the simple set – a circular plaza representing the Plaza de Mayo in Bueno Aires, with a single lamppost and a backdrop of changing projected images – Rossini confronts his nemesis, a man in a business suit reading a paper, waiting for the bus. Rossini recognizes this man as the Bishop, who cooperated with the junta. The Bishop not only fails to recognize Rossini but doesn’t see him at all, even though Rossini picks up his hand (to identify him) and picks his pocket. (Matthew Fritz, who silently played the Bishop, also played a general and a cleric during the course of the opera, offering pompous and self-justifying pronouncments on the “heroes” of the regime.)
But the work really belonged to the desaparecidos and their mothers. The first act established the various characters of the young people, their hopes for the new regime and their horror as the “dirty war” begins and they are taken away, one by one. (Illustrating this is a very effective number for the ensemble, in which the words “Have you heard about Señora Ortega’s son?” “Señora Ortega never had a son” scurry around each other in a fugue of fear and denial.)
The quiet organization of the mothers into Los Madres de la Plaza del Mayo (played by adult singers from the community) was the second-act fulcrum on which the opera turns. Elena Korovsky (Phyllis Drackley) has lost her pregnant daughter Sylvie Korovsky Sanchez (Jacqueline Coupe) and son-in-law Alberto Sanchez (Travis Lucas) to the police. Elisa de Suárez (Magda Silva), mother of labor organizer Miguel Suárez (Michael Tschop), recognizes Elena’s loss as they both walk in the square, and Elena is pushed toward public protest.
Elena in her turn contacts Helga Klein Cardeñas (Alison Mekeel), who fled Hitler’s Germany and who spurns politics. Helga is the mother of physicist Wilmer Klein Cardeñas (Matt Mangus), who also had no political involvement. Helga then invites the upper-class Isabel Adorno de Sanchez (Sarah Daughtry), whose son is Alberto Sanchez, to join the mothers, who are now wearing the white headscarves – made from cloth diapers – that became the movement’s identifying mark. Isabel is reluctant to wear a scarf or join the mothers in open protest, but changes her mind after her appeal to the Bishop, despite her social position and family connections, is ignored. Maria del Torres (Teresa Bomberger), mother of aspiring heart surgeon Daniela del Torres (Katie Bohdel), is married to a businessman who fears her actions “will get us all killed,” but she finally joins anyway.
(As Rossini observed at one point, “The walks became a march, and the march became a movement.”)
The scenes of the mothers interacting were interspersed with scenes of the desaparecidos recounting their cruel imprisonment, accompanied by other cast members standing motionless in red-lit tableaus, representing acts of brutality. In the third act the desaparecidos recounted their various terrible deaths. Sylvie is killed after she gives birth; in an especially moving scene, she sings of how she feared her child, her “darling,” would be taken from her once born. Daniela del Torres, subjected to brutal gang-rapes, but who had also formed an alliance with a fellow prisoner, Rudolfo (Adam Herneisey), writing poetry on hoarded scraps of paper, eventually succumbs to a heart attack.
As the opera wound to a conclusion, the mothers were temporarily reunited with their children in duets, but the children left the stage, one by one. The survivor Rossini was finally “united” with his mother Delia Vanotti Rossini (Debra Good-Zeiner), one of two silent mothers (the other was Señora Ortega, played by Mahua Bhattacharya) – she had actually died while he was in prison. The mothers vowed “We will not rest until justice is done” and the ensemble reappeared to reprise the opening chorus.
The music was quietly moving: Scored for a small orchestra and with the participation of additional chorus members, it was tonal and for the most part stayed away from dissonance (an exception being the discordant chord that ended the general’s solo and the first act. It was mostly minor-key and melancholy in mood, from time to time taking on a hopeful, sunny cast, once in a while carrying the hint of a dance, other times expressing anger. The angriest and most sorrowful lines were actually spoken (Elena’s cry “I want my son back! I want my son back right now!) In some ways this added to the impact; perhaps dissonance would have made the sorrow easier to take. (And why should it be easier?) All the cast members – especially Jacqueline Coupe and Katie Bohdel, who had the most gut-wrenching material – deserve to be commended for their handling of some of the most brutal, emotionally difficult material imaginable to bring onto the stage. The orchestra also carried out its role with skill and grace, especially the somber beginning for drum and double bass, and the little dance for Sylvie and Alberto in the second act.
A big bravo to all concerned for daring to imagine the unimaginable, and for bringing it to the stage so effectively.
