Experience the timeless vision of Sor Juana’s life through the captivating opera Primero Sueño, a deeply satisfying blend of musical styles that brings this visionary Mexican writer and nun to life.
The opera offers a deeply satisfying blend of musical styles that are alternatingly gentle, mystical, and joyous.
A Collaboration Born from Passion
Paola Prestini, composer and director of National Sawdust, and Magos Herrera, Mexican jazz singer, songwriter, and educator, have joined forces to create Primero Sueño, a processional opera made for The Cloisters about the life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. This collaboration is not their first; they have worked together before, and it shows in the way their styles mesh seamlessly.
A Visionary in Her Own Right
Sor Juana was a Mexican writer, nun, mystic, and early feminist figure who wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of her era. She was also a passionate advocate for women’s education in an age that consistently sought to forbid her access to knowledge. Prestini and Herrera depict Sor Juana as a visionary, but also as a creature of blood and bone, someone who has to fight and ultimately embrace her own humanity to see herself clearly.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a Mexican nun, philosopher, and writer.
Born in 1648, she was one of the most prominent figures of the Baroque period in Mexico.
Known for her intellectual pursuits, she wrote extensively on philosophy, theology, and literature.
She was also a skilled musician and composer.
Sor Juana's work challenged the patriarchal norms of her time, advocating for women's education and equality.
Her writings have had a lasting impact on Mexican literature and continue to inspire feminist movements worldwide.
The score is a deeply satisfying blend of medieval meets modern meets Latin jazz meets Mexican folk. Anchored by two musicians, who take up a bevy of instruments, including theorbo, Spanish guitar, harp, charango, and various types of percussion, Primero Sueño tends toward the gentle, mystical, and joyous.
Magos Herrera sings Sor Juana with a gentle strength; her voice is a marvelous instrument, shimmering and hazy, earthy and light at once. Six nuns flank her, sometimes her Greek chorus, other times the environment around her, other times just her sisters, with whom she shares her days.
The opera tells the story of Sor Juana trying to finish a poem. Various things collude to stop her, firstly the nasty Archbishop who forbids women to write and sing, then a vision of Death, who frightens Sor Juana and her nuns, and then, at last, her body fails her. How can she finish it? Any artist knows such a task is as easy as it is impossible.
As Sor Juana ascends the pyramid of her vision, attempting to capture all in her gaze, she becomes too dizzy. She’s betrayed by her own flesh. But only the memory of another story, that of Phaeton, who tried to drive the chariot of the sun but lost control, can recall her to her mission. He fell but was remembered in the stars.
Prestini and Herrera‘s opera is a work of great beauty and clarity, alighting on small phrases like ‘kind labor‘ to depict the daily rhythms of art and life as providing delicious, surprising translations of some of Sor Juana’s most challenging mystical language. This rich, meditative opera succeeds where other operatic treatments of Sor Juana do not, in part because it eschews strict biography in favor of poetry.
When Sor Juana finishes her poem, we rejoice with her, not only because we want to know how this artist confronts her failure and triumphs anyway, but because the end of the poem itself is about artistic renewal, a cycle that repeats like the sunrise.
