Overview
- The Metropolitan Opera production, which opens Thursday, runs through June 5 with a May 30 matinee broadcast in HD to cinemas worldwide.
- Isabel Leonard leads as Frida with Carlos Álvarez as Diego Rivera, joined by Gabriella Reyes as Catrina and Nils Wanderer as Leonardo under director-choreographer Deborah Colker and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
- The opera by composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz tells a fictional Day of the Dead reunion for Kahlo and Rivera rather than a traditional biography.
- Set designer Jon Bausor builds a dream world drawn from Kahlo’s imagery, including a blood-red tree, cracked earth, a blue shroud, and a mirror above the stage inspired by “Tree of Hope, Remain Strong.”
- Frank, a 2026 Pulitzer Prize winner, shapes an otherworldly sound with instruments like the marimba, while the Met run arrives with a linked MoMA exhibition co-curated by Bausor.