GABRIELA LENA FRANK | LIBRETTO BY NILO CRUZ
El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego
MET PREMIERE

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2025–26 Live in HD season comes to a close with a
live transmission of American composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, a magical-realist
portrait of Mexico’s painterly power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, with libretto by
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Fashioned as a reversal of the Orpheus and
Euridice myth, the story depicts Frida, sung by leading mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard,
leaving the underworld on the Day of the Dead and reuniting with Diego, portrayed by
baritone Carlos Álvarez. The famously feuding pair briefly relive their tumultuous love,
embracing both the passion and the pain before bidding the land of the living a final
farewell.

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Met-premiere staging of Frank’s
opera, a “confident, richly imagined score” (The New Yorker) that “bursts with color and
fresh individuality” (Los Angeles Times). The vibrant new production, taking enthusiastic
inspiration from Frida and Diego’s paintings, is directed and choreographed by Deborah
Colker.

1 Interval