Swashbuckling Operatic Finale

The hardy cultural force that is Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) just announced its next season, bolstered by the classic standard rep stuff of Pagliacci, The Marriage of Figaro, and The Daughter of the Regiment. But for this weekend’s 2023-24 season closer, the company turns its attention to more freshly baked operatic goods, in the contemporary but accessible form of Zorro, the 2022 opera by composer Héctor Armienta.

Zorro arrives as a thematic bookend to a season sprinkled with Spanish flavors, befitting the aspects of Spanish-heritage influences on Santa Barbara. Carmen opened the season in grand style at the Granada, followed by Spanish composer Xavier Montsalvatge’s chamber opera charmer El Gato con Botas, a compact dose of Christmas-timed family fare.

“Family fare” can also describe Zorro’s blend of swashbuckling action/dance, romance, injections of flamenco, and sociopolitical activism at sword point. Armienta is a respected Mexican-American composer based in Los Angeles, also the site of his Zorro — circa the early 19th-century period, when the region was a colony of New Spain.

A variation on the theme of Johnston McCulley’s famed Mexican swordsman hero and protector of the oppressed — made famous through film versions starring Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power — this Zorro is early L.A.-based, when there wasn’t even any Hollywood. Our hero, Diego de la Vega, is a Spanish nobleman disguised in Zorro garb, defending the indigenous mestizo citizens against the cruel governmental forces, with a love interest, Ana Maria, in the picture.

Zorro premiered at Albuquerque’s Opera Southwest, in conjunction with the Fort Worth Opera, directed by Octavio Cardenas, also behind the upcoming OSB production. Cardenas returns to the company and to town, after directing another contemporary Mexican-American oriented project, 2021’s Cruzar la Cara de la Luna. Other parties involved in Santa Barbara are our Zorro, tenor Xavier Prado, and soprano Oriana Falla as his lover. Sets and projections for the production are by Daniel Chapman, who also worked on OSB’s 2019 Madama Butterfly, and in the orchestra pit, the conductor is Anthony Barrese, also a part of the premiere production.

In a review of the premiere performance in the online magazine The Classical Review, Richard Sylvester Oliver surmised that “the story, the excitement, and the contemporary-minded social commentary all come together in luscious, fiery tones and a straightforward, captivating narrative. For what it is — an iconic pulp serial remade as opera — it is sure to become a favorite.”

Zorro has all the makings of a happy and entertaining endgame for another fine season at the opera, courtesy of OSB.

Opera Santa Barbara’s Zorro is at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.) Friday, April 19, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 21, at 2:30 p.m. See lobero.org for info and tickets.