The Opera de Tijuana has announced the first of its events for this upcoming season.
They include Madame Butterfly on May 18 and 20.
Also thrilled to see that the company will continue with what has become one of the truly fabulous arts events in Mexico: the Opera Street Festival.
It takes place on July 7 on Calle 5 in Colonia Libertad, likely the world’s most unexpected place to hear opera. (I wrote about this in my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream. There’s an NPR report I did on the topic with my MC homey Franc Contreras producing, as well.) You can see the border wall from the stage and the singers compete with the graffiti and the old American cars rumbling by. Expect 7000+ people.
A real event.
The city’s opera scene has a cool story behind it, involving a group of Russians musicians imported by one music-obsessed Tijuanense in the early 1990s — but that’s a long story and one I’ll tell later, or which you can read in my book.
