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You can expect an over-the-top experience during a night out at the Met opera from the moment you walk through the doors, until the minutes-long standing ovations. The premiere of Florencia en el Amazonas, on November 16, was no different. The audience sipped Champagne and posed for photos on the spiral staircases. Soon the house-lights went down, and everyone readied themselves for a historic moment: the first Spanish-language opera staged by the Met in 97 years.
The curtain revealed a bustling scene at the Amazon River port in Leticia, Colombia, during the early 1900s. Passengers prepared to board on a steamship, called the El Dorado, bound for Manaus, Brazil, where the famous Florencia Grimaldi (Ailyn Pérez) was scheduled to sing at the city’s legendary opera house. Everyone was excited for the show except for the diva herself. She boarded last and was dressed incognito: a pink trench coat with blue embroidery, a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a veil. The only person who recognized her was an omniscient character named Riolobo (Mattia Olivieri) who, in an early scene, wore gold drop earrings and a patterned vest, which—spoiler alert— are talismans for his mystical powers.
Florencia is not strictly a period piece, but the folklorish libretto is enhanced by a wardrobe by Ana Kuzmanić, a veteran costume designer who is a theater professor at Northwestern University. The individual garments—such as a piranha ball gown and winged dresses—bring to life “Florencia’s” elements of fantastical realism.
Kuzmanic is from Split, a Croatian port city on the luminous Adriatic Sea. “Water is certainly a big inspiration in my life and for my work. It was exciting to work on a piece that is based on water, even though it’s very different,” she said. She wore a gray knit sweater, hoop earrings, and glasses on the video call she took from an office at the Met; a keyboard leaned against the wall behind her. She said that the protagonist’s journey was important to her, too. “Florencia was a huge access point into the piece, everything started from her.”
Kuzmanić first fell in love with costume design when she was in college at The Academy of Applied Arts in the former Yugoslavia, which began to break apart in the early 1990s during a series of wars. She was drawn to the arts and captivated by the human form and ideals of beauty which varied throughout history. “The closest art form dealing with the body that I identified with was fashion. But it wasn’t a sole major, it was fashion and costume design,” Kuzmanić said. “In concept it sounds like two connected fields, but I realized that in fashion, clothing is the focus. And in costume design, character is the focus.”
Ángela Peralta— the soprano who was known as the “Mexican Nightingale” and sang in opera houses throughout Europe during the mid-nineteenth century— influenced Florencia Grimaldi’s style. All of her outfits have a butterfly element, which represents the character’s spiritual metamorphosis. “Her first look is this iconic diva; she’s completely in her disguise,” Kuzmanić said of Florencia’s costume during her first aria. “The dress that she reveals underneath the coat, if you look at her from the back, there is a detail of little lace wings.
From there the protagonist’s wardrobe evolves and becomes more colorful like a butterfly transforms within its cocoon. “One of the costumes has these stripes that are inspired by the caterpillar,” Kuzmanić said, referring to an A-line dress with a prism of pink and blue hues. “Her costumes also had some European flair because she lived all over the world.”
Mary Zimmerman, the director of Florencia, and Kuzmanić previously worked together on the 2021 Met production of Eurydice. Earlier in November, Zimmerman and Kuzmanić brought wildlife and the Amazon River to the Met stage. “What was really fantastic about this project was creating this magical world of nature and of beauty, as is so evident in Daniel Catán’s music,” Kuzmanić said. (The composer Catán, from Mexico City, wrote the opera which debuted at the Houston Grand Opera in 1996.)
A monkey on puppet strings exacerbated a lovers’ quarrel, and a school of piranha offered comic relief. “The challenge at first was to design something that would help the scene, which has a cheerful element to it,” Kuzmanić said. The dancers’ heads are engulfed by fish-shaped headpieces. “The actual piranhas of the Amazon have a specific look to them. They're kind of glistening, silvery, and they have these bright red bellies,” Kuzmanić said. “It came down to what was going to visually enhance the storytelling that the director and the choreographer were interested in.”
Alex Sanchez is the choreographer for the opera, and he arranged delightful vignettes. One dancer dressed as an Agami heron arabesqued, with beautiful lines, showing off the bird’s colorful wingspan. Then, a yellow and red hummingbird fluttered past on pointe. “It was interesting to work with the proportions,” Kuzmanić said. “We wanted to represent the small and the big of the plant life. There’s this enveloping element where the flora and fauna live and where the boat is sailing.”
The river near Leticia is dotted with giant Amazonian water lily pads that span up to 10 feet in diameter. In Florencia, the performers wore costumes that looked like palm fronds and flower petals. “The hats, their bodices, and skirts were made out of the same fabric as the water lily props,” she said. “I certainly mentioned the words, ‘It should look like a Dior hat.’ And the milliner knew exactly what I meant.” The lily pads varied in size and gave the illusion that they were moving on water.
Every opera has its dramatic turns, and in Florencia the voyage to Manaus is complicated by, among other things, a thunderstorm. “There are all these different aspects, and water is so shape shifting,” Kuzmanić said. “It's life giving. It can also be very dangerous.” The El Dorado ran aground, but the passengers triumphed, and the steamer was repaired. Soon, the famed Manaus opera house was on the horizon, but the ship’s captain (consistently dressed in a sharp white uniform) received word of a cholera outbreak. A fog rolled over the river and macabre creatures—a cross between a bird and the Venetian era plague-doctor costume—floated across the stage pulling coffins. “This specific type of eagle that lives on the Amazon and is called harpy eagle, they have very unusual features,” Kuzmanić said. “It is in dark color and the sleeves of the garment are created in folds that could emulate wings.”
Kuzmanić visited Mexico City, Catan’s hometown, to conduct research for Florencia, and she visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología, which houses artifacts that helped inform the costumes. On stage, Riolobo’s mystical nature is awakened, and he emerges dressed in an augmented gold-leafed costume. “One piece of textile caught my eye, which is hundreds of years old. It belongs to the Muisca people who were of the Andes, in Colombia,” Kuzmanić said. The directorial team wanted to take the journey from Leticia to Manaus to immerse themselves in the Amazon. How did they fare? “We planned that trip, and we actually never made it because the timeline didn't work out,” she said. “The director will tell you that ‘Just like the characters in the opera never it to Manaus, we never made it to Manaus.’”