Llantos 1492: A Flamenco Opera
February 23, 2025
by Ron Duncan Hart
Kudos to Opera Southwest and the National Institute of Flamenco for their remarkable production and World Premiere of Adam Del Monte’s Llantos 1492: A Flamenco Opera! Now, that’s a delightful twist—an opera sung in both Spanish and Hebrew about the Jews of Spain! Here is an opera made for New Mexico, set in Spain in 1492 as Jews were being expelled from that country, and the Inquisition was beginning its reign of terror against any Jew or Jewish convert who remained in Spanish lands.
My wife Gloria Abella Ballen and I attended the Wednesday night performance to what seemed to be a sold-out crowd at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. In a stroke of luck we sat next to Russ and Jane Resnik of Albuquerque, and we had an interesting conversation with them about Spanish Jews and their Diaspora. Then, at the intermission we had the delightful surprise of seeing Erika Rimson and then Judie Fein and Paul Ross, more Jewish presence.
After writing and teaching about Spanish Jews and the Diaspora of conversos or hidden Jews in the Americas for decades, I was anxious to see this opera, and it did not disappoint. I am not a qualified opera critic, but Del Monte’s music was strong and lifted in important moments by the flamenco guitar solos that he played personally. Nor am I a dance critic, but the choreographed dance routines were entertaining as opera should be, not quite the same as the power and passion of a Romani tablado in a cave in Sacromonte, the hill across from the Alhambra in Granada where Jews are said to have once lived. Some scenes are more operatic than historical, but this is opera.
The scene of the Jewish prayer service sung in Hebrew was powerful and pulled me into the spirit of prayer, making me feel a part of what I was seeing on the stage and feeling the absence of my tallit and kipa at that moment. It caught my attention that the Jewish men were wearing payot or sidelocks, a custom of Hasidic and Yemenite Jews in recent centuries, not Sephardic, but there are indications that some Medieval Spanish Jewish men did wear payot. Such issues slipped into insignificance in comparison to the power of this opera to communicate the Jewish experience of 1492.
Llantos 1492 shows the discrimination against both Jews and Romani, not unlike what the Nazis would repeat more than 400 years later, as Del Monte would have been aware because his grandmother was a survivor of the Holocaust. The difference in Spain was that the Romani were not expelled, and the Inquisition was focused on Jews, not the Romani, who were allowed to stay in the country as a reviled but tolerated minority until modern times when their culture of song and dance has become celebrated as the image of Spain.
This is not Carmen, but like a good opera it does have the drama of a love affair and conflict as it tells this important Jewish story interwoven with the vibrant singing and dancing of the Romani. There is a Jewish lawyer, Youssef Biboldo, who defends the Romani against unjust accusations. This innovative opera not only showcases the complex cultural tapestry of that time but also serves as a poignant reminder of a turbulent historical time. As Gloria and I savored this unique experience on the way back to Santa Fe, we talked about how art can be such a dramatic mirror to reflect the realities of the lives we lead.
The Jerusalem born composer of Llantos 1492, Adam del Monte, deserves congratulations/felicitaciones/Mazal tov for this innovative achievement of a flamenco opera bringing together history, culture, and the power of the arts to tell this all-important story of Spanish Jews. The land where they had lived for a thousand five hundred years turned against them in a wave of religious nationalism and expelled them from their beloved Sefarad with its aromas of jasmine and olive oil and their language of poetry. As the left their homeland with llantos, weeping, they found new welcoming homes in eastern Europe and the Muslim world, but they remembered Sefarad.
Opera Southwest presented Adam Del Monte’s Llantos 1492 in partnership with the National Institute of Flamenco, in Albuquerque through Feb. 23.
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