World Premiere
Tickets
Sunday, February 16, 2025 2:00 PM
Wednesday, February 19, 2025 7:30 PM
Friday, February 21, 2025 7:30 PM
Sunday, February 23, 2025 2:00 PM
At the National Hispanic Cultural Center Albuquerque Journal Theatre
Music and Libretto/ Adam Del Monte
Flamenco Meets Opera: A Bold Tale of Defiance
Imagine the year 1492. You likely think of Columbus, ocean blue, and the supposed dawn of a new world. Llantos 1492—“Cries 1492”—pushes you to look again. This flamenco-infused opera reframes the year not as triumph, but as a reckoning: a time when identities were erased, families were shattered, and entire communities fought to hold onto their souls.
The story unfolds in the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition and the fall of Granada. At its center is Youssef Biboldo, a Jewish lawyer and mystic who dares to challenge the machinery of intolerance. When a petty noble named Alfonso falsely accuses a group of gypsies—children, no less—of imagined crimes, Biboldo defends them, outwitting the system in a moment of fleeting victory. Yet this is no late medieval Matlock. Alfonso’s defeat sets off a spiral of revenge, forcing Biboldo, his family, and their gypsy allies to flee into the mountains of Granada, where Moors still hold their last stronghold under the waning reign of Boabdil.
But Llantos is not only Biboldo’s story. It is Raquel’s, his headstrong daughter who defies her father’s world to love Mariano, a gypsy singer whose flamenco voice carries both seduction and sorrow. It is Pedro de la Cruz’s, a secret Jew burned alive in an auto-da-fé, his death witnessed through a haunting Saeta chant. It is the gypsies, maimed and enslaved for refusing to bow. It is the Jews, exiled with nothing but their names and prayers.
Composer Adam del Monte stitches these stories together with a musical tapestry that feels at once ancient and startlingly alive. Flamenco rhythms beat like a pulse through the opera—raw, primal, impossible to ignore. The Cante Jondo—flamenco’s deepest, most guttural cry—meets operatic voices in a dialogue of cultures: Jewish melismas, Moorish poetry, and gypsy melodies weaving through the story like a lifeline.
By the opera’s end, the stage belongs to a single child. The son of Raquel and Mariano, stolen and baptized into Christianity, stands alone, draped in black, singing a final defiant Seguiriya: “I know who I am.” His words are a whisper and a roar—a promise that memory cannot be erased, that identity, however persecuted, will endure.
Llantos 1492 matters because it asks us to confront what happens when power turns on the vulnerable. It reminds us of a time when Jews, Muslims, and gypsies lived together in uneasy coexistence, only to be ripped apart by empire’s ambitions. And it insists that amid loss, survival is its own kind of triumph.
To hear Llantos is to hear history weep and sing. It’s a story of love, faith, and defiance, written in fire but carried forward in music. And it demands to be heard.
CAST
Youssef Biboldo / Brian James Myer
Don Alfonso / Ricardo Ceballos
Angela / Oriana Falla
Faisal/Juan / Dane Suarez
Juez/El Inquisidor / Javier Ortiz
Raquel / Barbara Martinez
Mariano / José Cortes
Tio Gitano / Vicente Griego
David / TBA
CREATIVE TEAM
Conductor / Anthony Barrese
Director / Octavio Cardenas
Scenic Designer / Tlaloc Lopez Watermann
Costumer / Kaylee Silcocks
Wigs & Makeup / Jacqueline Chavez
Lighting / Daniel Chapman
Chorus Master / Aaron Howe
Piano tuning and preparation are provided by Albuquerque Piano Services: http://www.albuquerque-piano-tuning.com
Running Time:
Sung in Spanish
-English translations are projected above the stage for all operas-
45 Minutes before curtain, Opera Southwest offers our “Opera Insights” pre-opera talks. These take place in either Bank of America auditorium or Wells Fargo auditorium, accessible from the shared lobby with the Journal Theatre.
