{"id":230997,"date":"2026-05-14T04:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230997\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T04:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:00:11","slug":"frida-kahlo-and-diego-rivera-are-given-a-voice-by-new-yorks-metropolitan-opera-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230997\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are given a voice by New York’s Metropolitan Opera – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fridamania is in full swing in New York this spring. The art-book publisher Rizzoli has just released a volume<\/a> about Frida Kahlo\u2019s new museum in Mexico City, located in her childhood home, written by the artist\u2019s grandniece and great-grandnieces. And the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a small but dramatic exhibition of works by both Kahlo and her longtime partner, Diego Rivera. <\/p>\n

But the biggest event takes place at the Metropolitan Opera House. There, a much-anticipated new production of El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o de Frida y Diego\u2014with music by Gabriela Lena Frank and libretto by Nilo Cruz, both Pulitzer Prize winners\u2014opens on 14 May. In a unique twist, the opera\u2019s set and costume designer, Jon Bausor, also co-curated the MoMA exhibition (in concert with the curator Beverly Adams, who specialises in Latin American art).<\/p>\n

El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o was already more than a decade in the making by the time it premiered in San Diego in 2022. \u201cMy mom introduced Frida Kahlo\u2019s artwork to me when I was five years old, but the idea of writing an opera about her didn\u2019t originate with me,\u201d Frank tells The Art Newspaper. For that, she credits the late conductor Joel Revzen, the artistic director of Arizona Opera in the early 2000s, who \u201ccaught wind of some of my art songs and felt I had an opera in me\u201d. After the two met, they started looking for a librettist and found Cruz, who had recently won a Pulitzer. \u201cHe stood out,\u201d Frank says. \u201cHe seemed like a lovely human being, and one thing he said was he didn\u2019t want to do a biopic. He wanted to illuminate new corners of Frida\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jon Bausor\u2019s design features a giant red tree sprouting from a blue bed frame Photo: Jonathan Dorado; \u00a9 The Museum of Modern Art, New York<\/p>\n

Emotion over history<\/p>\n

These new corners foreground grand emotion over historical accuracy and linear time\u2014as is customary in opera. El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o tells the story of Kahlo\u2019s spirit (sung in the Met\u2019s production by the mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard) rising up from the underworld on the Day of the Dead to reunite and reminisce with Rivera (baritone Carlos \u00c1lvarez), before helping him to cross over. In composing a score for this imagined realm, Frank says she wanted to incorporate Mexican music but in a very subtle way. <\/p>\n

She used the marimba and hints of Mariachi but says her focus was always on \u201cthe dream world of the living, the dead and art. I wanted it to sound ancient and old, beauty coalescing with dissonance,\u201d a nod to Kahlo\u2019s life of both physical and emotional pain. Of course, the new corners of the Met Opera\u2019s production are also highly visual. \u201cThe costumes and sets go deep into Frida\u2019s paintings,\u201d Frank says. \u201cInto her broken body, into her veins. It\u2019s visually very full of mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bausor, the creator of this visual mystery, says he started working on the opera\u2019s set and costume design a little more than two years ago. Commissioned by Peter Gelb, the Met Opera\u2019s general manager, Bausor incorporated references from both Kahlo\u2019s and Rivera\u2019s art without copying them outright. The stage floor is cracked earth through which Kahlo rises from the underworld, while a large scaffolding alludes to Rivera\u2019s famed work as a muralist. \u201cFrida is an icon; to me, she is one of the first performance artists,\u201d Bausor says. He describes his set as having a \u201cdreamlike sadness\u201d and a \u201critualistic sense of memory and life\u201d. <\/p>\n

Like Frank\u2019s music, Bausor\u2019s visuals fuse seemingly contradictory themes\u2014life and death, competition and collaboration, claustrophobia and expansiveness. \u201cThe opera is about a toxic relationship,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a duality and paradox of pain and love, and everything that goes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

MoMA\u2019s exhibition includes Frida Kahlo\u2019s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940) Photo: Peter Butler; \u00a9 2025 Banco de M\u00e9xico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York<\/p>\n

At the concurrent MoMA exhibition, Frida and Diego: The Last Dream (until 12 September), Bausor has used some of the same visual language of paradox to highlight Kahlo and Rivera works from the museum\u2019s collection. Some of these are hung on scaffolding in the middle of the gallery, while a giant red tree sprouts from a blue bedframe and grows into a large mirror on the ceiling. <\/p>\n

On the gallery walls, paintings are surrounded by thick blue stage curtains. \u201cThe paintings are the divas,\u201d Bausor says. \u201cThey\u2019re larger-than-life characters with big ideas that have stood the test of time.\u201d This is Bausor\u2019s first foray into museum curation, and he has enjoyed every minute. \u201cI would love to do it again,\u201d he says. \u201cIt has given me a lot more opportunity to have a dialogue that can evolve. There\u2019s a theatrical immersion people can have in the space that presents art like we present theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaborative approach<\/p>\n

Adams, Bausor\u2019s co-curator, is very pleased with the outcome. \u201cMoMA has done collaborations with the Met Opera before\u2014William Kentridge, for example\u2014but we have usually stayed in our lanes, and there hasn\u2019t been such a mixture of things,\u201d she says. \u201cWe learned that they were going to do a new production of the opera about a year-and-a-half ago, and we invited the director, set designer, librettist and composer to come talk to us.\u201d <\/p>\n

Given the museum\u2019s long history with both Kahlo and Rivera, it made perfect sense. This was Adams\u2019s first time co-curating with a set designer. \u201cHe did an amazing job. It\u2019s a space only a set designer or an artist could have created,\u201d she says. \u201cI was here as the facilitator. My job was to make sure the art that was there made sense and carried its weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Diego Rivera\u2019s Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita (1931) features in the MoMA show Photo: Erik Landsberg; \u00a9 2025 Banco de M\u00e9xico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F.\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.<\/p>\n

Among the works chosen for the MoMA exhibition are Kahlo\u2019s self-portraits, Rivera\u2019s paintings of Mexican workers and traditions, and photographs of the two artists. Perhaps the most surprising pieces are watercolours of costumes and sets Rivera created for the 1932 ballet H.P. (Horsepower) by the Mexican composer Carlos Ch\u00e1vez. These include outfits that seem impossible to move in\u2014dancers dressed as a giant bunch of bananas, a cigar or a gold bar. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ballet was a massive flop,\u201d Bausor says, \u201cbut I hadn\u2019t seen these works before or even heard of them. They are weirdly literal for Rivera, but I love them because they\u2019re fun. It was a real discovery for me.\u201d Bausor says he used the Rivera designs as inspiration for some of his own costumes for El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o.<\/p>\n

Adams points to Rivera\u2019s work in costume and set design\u2014as unsuccessful as it may have been\u2014as part of the history of collaborations between the visual and performing arts, popular during the Modernist era and continuing to this day. At both MoMA and the Met Opera, she notes that there are \u201cworks of art inside other works of art\u201d, creating a completely new experience. \u201cThe public seems entranced by it all,\u201d she says of the response to the MoMA show. \u201cPeople are lingering, and they seem in awe. It\u2019s a visual extravaganza.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 El \u00daltimo Sue\u00f1o de Frida y Diego<\/a>, Metropolitan Opera, New York, until 5 June<\/p>\n

\u2022 Frida and Diego: The Last Dream<\/a>, Museum of Modern Art, New York, until 12 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fridamania is in full swing in New York this spring. The art-book publisher Rizzoli has just released a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[90660,90659,83442,90041,3139,9,11,10,49,51,50,18639],"class_list":["post-230997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-diego-rivera","tag-frida-kahlo","tag-frieze-new-york-2026","tag-museum-of-modern-art-new-york","tag-museums-heritage","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}