We welcome two creators of the upcoming LA Opera production of The Three Women of Jerusalem: Carla Lucero, composer/librettist, and Dr. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, translator.
Lucero is the first Latinx and female composer to be commissioned for the LA Opera’s Cathedral Operas. We discover how they translated the opera into Spanish while retaining the same poetic meter, as Lucero will produce the opera in English as well.
We also discuss the significance of the Stations of the Cross, on which the opera is based, as well as why Lucero chose three anonymous women in the 8th station to be the heroines of the story. She also makes a fascinating choice on how to personify Jesus in the opera.
The massive production will be at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and will feature 3 orchestras and 3 choirs. We can’t wait to see this “love letter to LA,” which fuses ideas from feminist, Latinx, and borderlands cultures into an uplifting whole.
BIO: Dr. Rita Urquijo-Ruiz
Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana queer educator, writer, activist, and performer born in Sonora, Mexico and raised in southern California. She is a professor of Spanish and Chicanx/Latinx cultural and LGBTQ+ studies. Her academic interests are Mexican, Chicanx, and Latinx literatures, cultures, gender and sexuality, as well as theater and performance studies. As a daughter of the Mexico/US borderlands, her approach to teaching and writing is interdisciplinary by nature and her work centers the stories of socially and economically marginalized communities in these two bordering countries. She is the first member of her extended family to receive a college degree and in 2019, she became the first Latina faculty to go through the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor at Trinity University.
Her academic and artistic work has been presented at local, national, and international conferences such as El Mundo Zurdo by the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social/Women Active in Letters and Social Change (MALCS), the Association for Jotería, Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS), the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS), and the International Conference on Chicano Literature and Latino Studies by HispaUsa, in Spain.
CARLA LUCERO
Las Tres Mujeres de Jerusalén (The Three Women of Jerusalem), also a Spanish language work, is commissioned by LA Opera. It will premiere March 19th, under the baton of Maestro James Conlon, at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles.
- It is the first by a female composer and the first Spanish-language opera to be commissioned for LA Opera performances at the Cathedral.
- It will also be LA Opera’s first large-scale public performance to incorporate musicians participating via online conferencing, something that the company has embraced throughout the pandemic via the LA Opera On Now platform of digital programming.
WUORNOS, her opera about “America’s first female serial killer”, Aileen Wuornos, premiered at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, winning “10 Best of Stage” from The Advocate and OUT magazines.
Juana, premiered in 2019 with Opera UCLA, a Spanish language opera about 17th century Mexican feminist icon, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, will have its New York premiere this summer with dell’Arte Opera Ensemble.
touch, is about blind/deaf American writer and activist, Helen Keller. The libretto is co-written with Marianna Mott Newirth. It premieres in 2024 with Opera Birmingham.
dr. Rita Urquijo-Ruiz
BIO: Dr. Rita Urquijo-RuizRita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana queer educator, writer, activist, and performer born in Sonora, Mexico and raised in southern California. She is a professor of Spanish and Chicanx/Latinx cultural and LGBTQ+ studies. Her academic interests are Mexican, Chicanx, and Latinx literatures, cultures, gender and sexuality, as well as theater and performance studies. As a daughter of the Mexico/US borderlands, her approach to teaching and writing is interdisciplinary by nature and her work centers the stories of socially and economically marginalized communities in these two bordering countries. She is the first member of her extended family to receive a college degree and in 2019, she became the first Latina faculty to go through the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor at Trinity University.
