'Family history': Austin Opera tells moving migrant stories in its first mariachi opera

Inside a brightly lit rehearsal hall tucked into a North Austin industrial park, two performers speak earnestly in Spanish.

A hanging sheet of plastic serves as a rehearsal door. They open and shut it as their conversation waxes and wanes.

Daniel Noyola and Efraín Corralejo play Laurentino and Rafael — long-separated father and son — in "Cruzar le Cara de la Luna," the world's first mariachi opera.

Time and again, director David Radamés Toro works through a short but intense spoken-word scene between the two actors.

Once the performers glide into the gorgeous yet subdued duet "Los Ojos de tu Madre," with music by the late José "Pepe" Martínez, the blank rehearsal hall becomes a moonlit night.

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The enchantment of Austin Opera's ongoing endeavor to promote and develop Spanish-language opera becomes all the more clear.

The subject matter is, once again, as timely as headlines in this newspaper.

"Moment after moment, this piece captured the dilemma of immigration in sadly human ways," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini about the 2018 New York City Opera staging of "Cruzar." "When Laurentino tells his young wife that he must go to America for the future of the family, she bluntly replies, 'I didn’t marry you to get money in the mail.'"

How Austin Opera moved into the mariachi space

Part of an informal trilogy, "Cruzar" was first produced by Houston Grand Opera in 2010 as one of the company's second-stage offerings. In that version, the music was supplied by a full mariachi band performing alongside the singers.

With small changes, this interpretation was revisited by Arizona Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, New York City Opera and other companies.

The variant, however, that audiences will see and hear this week at the Long Center for the Performing Arts was jointly commissioned by Austin Opera and Minnesota Opera. Along with new sets and costumes, crucial new orchestrations by David Hanlon will complement the mariachi sounds of Trío Chapultepec, made up of Vincent Pequeño, Israel Alcala and William Carlton Galvez.

"The new orchestrations allow us to pick a wider variety of crayons from our crayon box," Toro says. "We can choose a big Hollywood sound for one setting, for instance. In the original, the mariachi band was the 'chorus.' Now we have a full chorus, an orchestra, and three mariachi musicians all at the same time."

Toro, who studied opera direction at the University of Texas, was nominated for an Austin Critics Table Award for "Les Enfants Terribles." He also directed the earlier Minnesota staging of "Cruzar."

The addition of a full orchestra to this Texas-Minnesota project means more than a bigger, more fluent sound: it makes "Cruzar" available to companies that must fulfill union contracts with their instrumentalists.

"No longer is 'Cruzar' just a second-stage show," Burridge says. "Now it can be one of the main operas on a season and become a permanent legacy."

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This week's breakthrough performance was made possible by the $3.3 million Butler Fund for Spanish Programming, announced in April 2022. This unique gift from Austin arts mega-donors Ernest and Sarah Butler was followed in April 2023 with "Bella Noche de Música," a concert al fresco at the Moody Amphitheater in Waterloo Park, with thousands of free tickets made possible by the Moody Foundation.

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All this fresh activity was overseen by Claudia Chapa, the Austin Opera’s curator of Hispanic and Latinx programming, who also appears in this week's staging of "Cruzar."

"We pull $120,000 a year from the endowed fund, which incentivizes Spanish programming in perpetuity," says Austin Opera general director and CEO Annie Burridge. "Claudia's appointment is an integral part of the program. The fund doesn't support 100 percent of any given project, but rather parts of many projects."

The most visible aspects of the program will be more fully staged operas like "Cruzar," especially those that reflect Hispanic experiences in this part of the world.

Candidates for future selections include Martínez's other mariachi operas, "El Pasado Nunca se Termina" and "El Milagro del Recuerdo," as well as works by late Mexican composer Daniel Catán, such as the glorious "Florencia en el Amazonas" and "Il Postino."

A sad operatic footnote: Catán died in Austin on April 8, 2011, while in residence at UT's Butler School of Music.

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In addition to underwriting the big Spanish-language shows, Austin Opera will use the Butler endowment to fund residences, workshops and new pieces. Two creative teams are already working on projects.

"We were blown away by the quantity and quality of applications," Burridge says. "We can't commission on our own. Our place as a relatively small opera company is to see how we can help, then partner with other companies."

One of those new projects is being written; the other is ready to start.

"We're located near the beginning of the creative pipeline," Burridge says. "Ideally, we would stay with the projects and be part of their premieres. No one was prioritizing Spanish-language opera, but there's so much interest in the storytelling that has been missing from operatic canon."

Unlike other major performing arts groups across the country, Austin Opera is already exceeding pre-pandemic levels of attendance with increasingly large crowds.

"We don't have old-line foundations, corporations or governments in Austin to provide a permanent baseline for the arts," Burridge says. "Instead, we have amazing individual donors and ticket buyers. Ours is a different course and path. We simply cannot ignore audiences."

Generations of immigrant experiences

During a pre-rehearsal interview, director Toro talks about the layered portrayal of immigrants and their descendants, as well as those left behind in the old country.

In "Cruzar," Mexican worker Laurentino left his wife, Renata, and his son, Rafael, in Michoacán to work in the United States decades ago. He sends remittances back to Mexico, but now he lies dying in the U.S. His American son, Mark, serves as primary caretaker; his granddaughter, Diana, remains curious about Laurentino's hidden, other family and its hints of tragedy.

Toro, whose parents are of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, grew up mostly in Colorado. He attended the University of Colorado and Ohio State University before finishing his training at UT.

"Family history is common to these stories," Toro says of Martínez's operas. "Early in rehearsals, we did 'table work' and talked about the characters. We have first-, second- and third-generation immigrants in the cast. Many of the stories in the opera are reflected their own stories and those of others in their families."

Much of the action takes place in Laurentino's memory.

"He is in the last days of his life," Toro says. "He has good days and bad days. He confuses the past with the present. Onstage, the actor physically steps out of one part of the set, and people join him in that space. We wanted to emphasize how people are reliving memories, not merely flashbacks."

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Toro thinks "Cruzar" makes a great introduction to opera.

"It's only 75 minutes," he says. "Concise and to the point. We hear the mariachi not as a joke, but in all its color and glory. It is treated with the dignity it deserves."

"I saw it in Minnesota and loved it," Burridge says. "Much of the story is about universal experiences, such as caring for a parent whose health is failing, maybe shifting in and out of lucidity. We are ensuring that an opera like this one has a life beyond its premiere."

'Cruzar la Cara de la Luna'

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1 and Feb 3, 2 p.m. Feb. 4

Where: Long Center for the Performing Arts

Tickets: Start at $39

Info: austinopera.org