Catalina Pereda / Tempus Fugit / Christian Gohmer MARCELA RODRÍGUEZ Las Cartas de Frida

 Marcela Rodríguez’s latest opera ‘Las cartas de Frida’ [Frida's letters], sets out to dispel the ‘folkloric’ myth of Frida Kahlo by showing the artist through her letters. 

According to Rodríguez, the greatest threat to Frida’s legacy is Frida herself. ‘We have stopped looking at Kahlo’s art for looking at Kahlo herself’, she told, referring to Julie Taylor’s movie and Robert X Rodriguez’s opera-musical among other recent works. ‘And yet we can’t even see her. All we see is the relationship with Diego, the rave-ups, the myths I’m personally completely uninterested in’. 

Rodríguez, a native of Kahlo’s own neighbourhood of Coyoacán, based the opera on the artist’s diaries and letters found in her childhood home of Casa Azul (now a museum).

 “I was enthralled by her honesty”, she said. “Her style is beautiful, deeply humorous and scathingly critical of society. She doesn’t shrink from vulgarity either. But this is how we speak here”. 

The opera premiered in Berlin in 2011 and was briefly shown at UNAM in May-June, to enthusiastic reviews.

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