Director’s Notes

David Radamés Toro
Stage Director 

My introduction to Leonard Foglia and José Martinez’s operas was in 2019, when I was asked to assist Leonard Foglia on El Pasado Nunca Se Termina – their second collaboration fusing opera and mariachi as a means of storytelling and celebrating Mexican heritage. This production stirred a new love and emotion I felt for opera. I was in a room with other Latino musicians, amongst a diverse representation of latinidad composed of musicians from South and Central America, Puerto Rico, and the US. There were people who were first, second, and like me, third-generation Americans. I felt represented, not the token in the room, not the person whose heritage had been mocked or dismissed. After our first sing through of the piece, I was choked up hearing mariachi and opera, two art forms that I adore, coming together to tell a story about Latino families. I knew that day that I needed to tell these stories. Not only the Foglia and Martinez’s trilogy (Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, El Pasado Nunca Se Termina, and El Milagro del Recuerdo), but I wanted to be a part of expanding the American operatic canon to include stories about Latinos and latinidad in the United States. 

American media tends to file the Latino experience under “immigration stories” and focus almost exclusively on Latinos as immigrants. Though immigration is an irrefutable part of the wider community, this singular lens ignores the generations who live in the United States, their heritages, and their place in the greater American narrative. One of the many beautiful aspects of the mariachi trilogy is its themes of heritage, family, and identity. The characters in this opera reflect the beautiful diversity within the Velásquez family’s Mexican heritage, which is comprised of Mexican citizens, those who have immigrated to the US, and first- and second-generation Mexican Americans. The youngest generation seeks to reunite a family that has been separated by miles, time, and trauma. With this directive, I sought to approach this opera from the point of view of memory. Flashback scenes are not only expository but experienced from the point of view of its protagonist, as the characters face their past trauma in order to begin the path toward familial reconciliation.  

The success of this mariachi trilogy is its specificity and through that specificity, its universality. It is indicative of the need for the American operatic repertory to reflect the diverse American experience through musical foundations from BBIPOC communities and centered with themes of family, heritage, community, and history.