Opera Magazine
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo came to California for the first time in 1930. They arrived in San Francisco, where Rivera was commissioned to paint the epic mural Allegory of California, and stayed for 18 months. Kahlo, who had started painting only a few years earlier, participated in her first show during that trip. Almost 100 years later, the famous couple has returned to California- this time as characters in a new opera.
[González-Granados] gave Frank's score even more shape and shimmer than it had at its premiere.
Le Soleil
REVIEW / The Quebec Symphony Orchestra opened the year with a stunning female duo, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and Colombian conductor Lina González-Granados. A concert that delighted more than one, and with good reason.
The first word that comes to mind when listening and watching the leader lead is integrity . Because González-Granados is not here to put on a show .
LA Times
Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera meet again in the infraworld fantasy of “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” at L.A. Opera. Composed by Latin Grammy winner Gabriela Lena Frank, with the libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, “El último sueño de Frida y Diego” reimagines the final moments between the turbulent pair across different planes.
“It’s so important to tell the stories of Latinos on a main stage. ... There is richness and vastness in our stories,” said Lina González-Granados, L.A. Opera’s resident conductor. “Even if opera has been a Eurocentric experiment that has come to our countries, we have made it ours. Opera is ours.”
Seen and Heard International
Frida Kahlo narrated her difficult life through her autobiographical paintings, from her catastrophic bus accident to her tragic miscarriage to the pain of a life with her philandering husband, the famed muralist Diego Rivera. It is a narrative replete with captivating images and, as such, is eminently transferrable to the stage.
Conductor Lina González-Granados led the LAO Orchestra, drawing out both the highly textured dissonances of the music and the lyricism in the strings. The weaving of orchestral colors felt like an embroidered dress worn by Kahlo herself.
Parterre Box
Despite this being the first full-length opera for Gabriela Lena Frank, there’s no lack of experience across the creative team which, along with favorable reviews for the production, contributed to high levels of anticipation.
Ms. Gonzalez-Granados’s work here was especially vibrant and she facilitated a moving finale.
Indulge Magazine
Gabriela Lena Frank’s haunting new opera, ‘El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,’ traversed the realms of love and mortality as famed muralist, Diego Rivera (baritone, Alfredo Daza) summons his wife, painter Frida Kahlo (mezzo-soprano, Daniela Mack) from the afterlife. The allure of painting again, guided by Catrina (an unrecognizable Ana Maria Martinez) and the spectral presence of Leonardo (Key’mon W. Murrah) impersonating Greta Garbo, draws Frida back to the living.
Conductor Lina González-Granados expertly navigated Frank’s purposefully atonal score with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Nilo Cruz, creating a vivid, occasionally chilling sonic landscape.
Bachtrack
Gabriela Lena Frank's El último sueño de Frida y Diego, about the force that was Frida Kahlo and her relationship with Diego Rivera has its share of hallucinogenic dream sequences but is mostly concentrated in a ritualistic procession of powerful tableaux of their world and underworld.
The LA Opera Orchestra, sounding lithe and virtuosic, followed Lina Gonzalez-Granados with enthusiasm and a brilliant range of colors. From the first complex, conflicted chords and rumbling thunder, it was clear that the orchestra was in great shape.
I Care If You Listen
In their debut opera, El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, Grammy Award-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz unravel the complexities of physical and emotional pain, love, and permanence within the marriage of famed Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
San Francisco Classical Voice
As its contribution to the California Festival, Los Angeles Opera joined the neighboring Los Angeles Philharmonic in giving the lion’s share of attention to Latin American music and performers.
...the applause built slowly until finally almost everyone stood — as if they were gradually pulled out of the dreamlike state that this work of art had created. This piece will sneak up on you.
KCRW Press Play
LA Opera's new resident conductor, Lina González-Granados, is leading the organization’s production of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, which translates to “the last dream of Frida and Diego,” referring to Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In the show, Rivera wants to reunite with his late wife on Día de Muertos to ask for her forgiveness. It’s a major showcase of Latino talent, from the cast to composer to librettist.
La Prensa
González-Granados is on a roll but her true focus is on Latino composers. Artistic Director of Unitas Ensemble a chamber orchestra González-Granados founded, performs work of Latino composers and free performances for underserved communities.
La Opinion
This opera is focused on how Frida is so passionate about her art and how she lived in peace after the terrible things she endured, such as suffering from polio and surviving a tram accident in which she was traveling in Mexico City, said the host.
“I think it's fascinating, especially because Frida's life was filled with a vast number of complex layers,” said the Los Angeles Opera's resident conductor, who returns to the city to conduct starting this weekend “The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”, an opera based on the life, romance and work of these two iconic Mexican painters.
Metro Philadelphia
Before Saturday’s showcase— which will take place at Verizon Hall on the Kimmel Cultural Campus—Lina Gonzalez-Granados talked about how it is she came to the conductor’s baton, to Philadelphia, and to her leadership role.
"The program is unique in the way it is devised. The book is one that kids from the Kauffman Center wrote, and the aesthetic idea comes from the need to reframe this story as they feel fit. Kids of this age being responsible for that goal – there is pride in that, and beauty. The Philadelphia Orchestra are helpers in that. My role here is to curate, to create a libretto based on their book and their experiences writing, to put them at the center of the story. They love how people are rediscovering Price and other Black women composers. This is a story from the kids for the kids. African-American music is American music – that is important to know."
KCET
Last September, Colombia-born Lina González-Granados was appointed the new resident conductor of the L.A. Opera, a post she'll hold through June 2025. The internationally recognized conductor is dedicated to highlighting new and unknown works by Latin-American composers. Learn how González-Granados fell in love with music and overcomes challenges in a historically male-dominated industry.
Bachtrack
Audiences in Philadelphia had the opportunity to rediscover the works of two Black composers from the mid-20th century last week. A day after the Philadelphia Orchestra returned William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony to its repertory, Opera Philadelphia introduced Credo by Margaret Bonds, a cantata setting of a text by W E B Du Bois that celebrates the beauty and resilience of Black American life.
"In her Opera Philadelphia debut, conductor Lina González-Granados brought out a sweeping grandeur in the orchestra when necessary, but her approach was most notable for threading a seamless narrative needle across the cantata’s seven movements."
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The concert echoed W.E.B. Du Bois' message in musical form... Choruses, orchestra and vocal soloists presented the odd pairing of Orff’s Carmina Burana, famous for its screaming sound, and Margaret Bond’s Credo, quiet by comparison and hardly known at all.
"She has clear technique and a way with phrase-shaping that tells a compelling story — qualities that make a good case for her return in other repertoire."
AL DÍA
Lina González-Granados spoke with AL DÍA to discuss her journey and just what her impending debut means to her as one of the very few Latinas in this industry.
“It’s always very profound and philosophical when you conduct, but for me, when you can be more in contact with the community, those are the moments that I feel that my job is doing something.”
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
"I think we have the privilege to actually be an active part of creating that tradition, instead of following somebody else’s interpretation. The text is beautifully adapted, and I have the only – and to be honest the most important – tool I need, which is the score. As long as we are honoring Margaret Bonds’ intentions and creative instincts, that is the only thing I pay attention to."
San Francisco Classical Voice
"Indeed, as presented by Los Angeles Opera, the urgency and in-your-face elements of an octet of singers and a 13-piece LAO ensemble, insightfully led by Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados, gave new meaning to the words intimacy, clarity, and beauty, all wrapped in a damning and brutal storyline."
Los Angeles Times
In a concert hall in downtown Los Angeles on a recent Saturday evening, classical music fans applauded a superstar Latin American conductor with pride and enthusiasm. It wasn’t L.A.’s familiar Venezuelan with tightly coiled salt and pepper curls onstage, but rather a newer face in town — a Colombian American with smooth, shiny brown hair slicked back into a bouncy ponytail.
"When González-Granados conducts, it’s as if the music is alive inside her body, flowing through her arms, dancing with all the right steps."
Daily Trojan
As Lina González-Granados made her way through the pit to the podium at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion last Saturday, the audience buzzed with an especially welcoming and animated applause. Appointed the Resident Conductor of the LA Opera last September, the evening was her debut appearance with the company, an opportunity to demonstrate the energy and presence she hopes to bring to the orchestra.
"Lucia di Lammermoor becomes indispensable, with tremendous modern-day relevance. González-Granados succeeds in leading a performance that expresses profound emotion, enhancing the cathartic effect of the opera."
Seen and Heard International
In this LA Opera co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, the seventeenth-century Scottish setting of Lucia di Lammermoor, which is based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel, has been replaced by a kaleidoscopic vision of a present-day, depressed town in America’s rust belt.
"The new resident conductor, Lina González-Granados, formerly assistant conductor to Riccardo Muti at the Chicago Symphony, was in the pit and the LAO Orchestra was in good hands. The music sparkled, the singers were perfectly supported, and the tragic underpinnings of the famous score bristled."
Classical Voice
For the season opener Lucia di Lammermoor, director Simon Stone set the seventeenth-century Scottish period piece in a present-day American Midwestern town fallen on hard times with drug and economic issues.
"L.A. Opera’s new resident conductor Lina González-Granados (born in Colombia) proves Mr. Porter right, turning Donizetti’s orchestral accompaniment into something taut and thrilling"
Parterre
We had two very important debuts to look forward to in the form of our new resident conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados and innovative stage director Simon Stone.
"Maestro Gonzalez-Granados not only led a fiercely exciting performance but managed to capture the dark sound in Donizetti’s orchestrations necessary to convey the growing sense of foreboding in the story. She never failed to provide sensitive and stylish accompaniment to her able cast, even offering beautiful rubato effects in some of those aforementioned repeats and strettas that highlighted both the singers and the music to their fullest."
San Francisco Classical Voice
The 36-year-old maestra, who makes her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl on Aug. 11, has also racked up fistfuls of honors and rave reviews. OperaWire praised her “attention to orchestral colors,” while The Boston Musical Intelligencer commended her ability to create “lightning changes in tempo, meter, and effect.”
Chicago Sun-Times
[González-Granados] emphasized the lyrical sweep of Beethoven’s music, integrating its shifting emotions into a cohesive whole... and the soaring, romantic melodies of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 were an ideal showcase for Gonzalez-Granados’s ability to sculpt rich, heartfelt orchestral sound.
Chicago WTTW
Now, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has its very own “last minute hero” story, too. Her name is Lina Gonzalez-Granados. And she was the winner of the fourth Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition. She served for a year as the Solti conducting apprentice under the guidance of maestro Riccardo Muti.
At once seductive and grandiose, Brahms drives this symphony to a heated finale, and the CSO musicians and Gonzalez-Granados (who was met with many rounds of enthusiastic applause), were with the composer every step of the way.
Third Coast Review
Review: Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lina González-Granados Exhibit Brilliance With the CSO
With only a few hours notice, the Colombian-American conductor González-Granados clicked with the orchestra, as if she’d been performing with them for years. The CSO helped by bringing its best playing, which was evident from the quiet opening of Beethoven’s violin concerto. As the section chairs traded the melody, which built as instruments joined the conversation, the playing was crisp and tight—no ragged edges at all. While the tempo was a bit slower than I like, their warmth was soulfully infectious. González-Granados built this into a lovely aural fabric... González-Granados seized on the Brahms immediately by entering the stage and starting things with barely a pause. The orchestra continued its fabulous night from the opening notes. Especially effective was the clarity each section showed when in the limelight, and then blending into the sound when a different section came to the fore. González-Granados was very much a part of the action, her arms swaying to the sounds while engaging each section.
Mundoclasico.com
The version was excellent: precise, passionate and with very clear ideas, carefully planned and executed. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise that level of commitment in the first work of the program and, above all, the affinity of the director with this repertoire, which can provide stupendous interpretations.
El Norte de Castilla
Colombian director Lina González-Granados demonstrated security and maturity in the overture 'La Fuerza del Destino'
The Colombian director Lina González-Granados showed confidence and maturity in the overture "The Force of Destiny", which opened the program. A very clear vision of this excellently made Verdi model.
Chicago Sun-Times
With Riccardo Muti forced to withdraw from this weekend’s series of concerts, Lina González-Granados became the first Latina to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
…(Lina Gonzalez Granados) delivered clean, efficient performances of both selections and demonstrated a feel for the theatrical flair that is essential to both. With expansive, fluid gestures, she found the fun and whimsy in the “Barber” overture and brought it to a suitably boisterous conclusion but seemed most at home in the “Don Giovanni”, giving shape to its out-sized emotions.
KCRW FEATURES
Latinos in general have played an important role in the society of LA, and it's time for Latinas in general to take leadership. There are not that many [Latinas] in those positions of leadership culturally. I think it's just a huge responsibility. Hopefully, by me getting these accolades and this post, more Latinas are inspired. This is a real measurement of change that is happening.
KABC
The award-winning conductor is a strong believer that all music has potential to be a classical piece. "In L.A. in general, it's a city with such an explosion of multicultural resources. Our musics are as valuable as our beings," said Gonzalez-Granados.
Solti Foundation
Lina is one of ten conductors awarded a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation US. These grants are given each year to young American conductors early in their careers who have chosen to follow a path similar to the legendary Sir Georg Solti.