Carla Lucero's Opera "Juana" at UCLA
They say that well behaved women rarely make history. Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz, the subject of Carla Lucero’s opera “Juana” that premiered this weekend at UCLA, was one of those women. But while twenty first century women have sixty years of feminist thought behind them, Sor Juana was going it alone.
Sor Juana was a seventeenth century Mexican nun known for her revolt against the patriarchal culture of colonial Mexico. She wanted to maintain her independence, so she committed herself to an order of hieronymite nuns in order to shield herself from wifely expectations.
From the start, Sor Juana is a problem, and Meagan Martin plays her with all the impetuousness scholars have come to expect from the real Sor Juana. While she only joined the convent because she couldn’t stand the thought of living a life dominated by men, Sor Juana’s shirking of the priorities expected of a young nun provoke the ire of Michelle Rice’s infuriatingly overbearing Madre Melchora. Though the nuns are more than happy to enjoy the plaudits that come to them from Sor Juana’s presence.
Sor Juana takes pleasure in skewering the hypocrisy she sees in the male race. She says to the Viceroy and Vicereine, La Condesa, played jovially by Mario Arias and Michelle Drever respectively, who have come from Spain to rule in the king’s stead, “men want to go to bed with Mary Magdalene, but when you wake up, they want the Virgin Mary.”
In Sor Juana’s view, women are the playthings of men. Women are chattel, child bearers. Their only good use is to cook and clean and serve the men to whom they are devoted. And if a woman refuses, as Sor Juana did; indeed, if that women is more intelligent than a man, threatens him by virtue of her sheer intellect, she will be cut down for her hubris, fallen by the saw of arrogance of the masculine sex.
At one point, Justin Birchell’s Father Antonio, when he realizes he is no longer welcome in a meeting between La Condesa and Sor Juana, says that he is like a “fly in the milk” which is a common Spanish saying. After he leaves, La Condesa tells Sor Juana, “he’s more like a turd in the milk.”
The opera is ground breaking, though, because at no other time in the canon has a lesbian love affair been a major plot line. Sor Juana and La Condesa, the Viceroy’s wife, fall in love. And that love culminates in a tender scene where they meet in La Condesa’s bedroom. Martin and Drever seem to have a spiritual bond on stage, carefully, delicately embracing. Sara E. Widzer’s direction evokes, in a dream like manner, the passion these two women must have felt.
Each scene is punctuated by an appearance from “El Alma.” “Alma” is Spanish for “soul” and she is a ghost that has no interaction with the other characters. She sings of Aristophanes' myth of the separated humans from Plato’s “Symposium,” where humans used to be joined by their soulmate, but were separated by Zeus’ lightning bolt. This seems to allude to how Sor Juana and La Condesa were once joined, are now cursed to yearn for one another for the rest of their lives.
Alexa Weinzierl’s costumes are period perfect. The ostentatious fabrics of the Viceroy and Vicereine, and the embroidered robes of the clergy, evoke the appropriate time period and contrast perfectly with the nun’s habits. But El Alma’s gown and starburst headdress astound with sequins and sparkling organza.
Contemporary classical music has a reputation for being atonal, dissonant and hard to listen to. Lucero’s music is the opposite of that. She wrote the score not to challenge her listeners, but to enhance a story that has captivated her for over a decade.
The music has an elegance that is both sparse and generous. It is modern. It doesn't seem to allude to any other classical style. Even including a harp and harpsichord, it eludes a time or place, and has a style all its own.
The opera ends with the Archbishop, Bishop and Father Antonio lording over her, shouting accusations at her. They force her to disband her beloved library and care for some tubercular nuns, from whom she herself contracts the disease. For an intellect whose writings became famous back in Spain, it's a terribly unfortunate end. But given the men’s history of punishing intelligent women, it’s not unexpected.
It seems the more powerful the hypocrites, the more they punish those who deign to criticize them. And the more potent the hypocrisy, and the more articulate the criticism, as was Sor Juana’s, the more devastating the punishment will be.
We are fortunate to live in a time and place where women can express themselves, as they have done with this opera, whose production team was composed nearly entirely of women: costume designer Alexa Weinzierl, lighting designer Luz Lucila Tapia Gaitan, scenic designer Madie Hays, choreographer Nicola Bowie, director Sara E. Widzer and it was conducted by the Asian American - an impossible rarity in music circles - Mary Chun. It was telling: two standing ovations later, and not a man in sight.
