Kelley O’Connor & Dawn Upshaw. Photo by Ken Howard.

Ainadamar, the “fountain of tears,” in Granada, Spain, gives Ainadamar , the compelling, moving 2003 opera by Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang, its name. With score by the former, an Argentinean of Eastern European Jewish descent, now living in Massachusetts, and libretto by the playwright, translated into Spanish by the composer, Ainadamar was given its New York premiere production, as part of Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, at Rose Hall on January 22, 24 and 26. The third of these performances is discussed here.

Ainadamar marks the place where the Spanish Inquisition martyred Jews and Muslims, where a young political activist named Mariana Pineda was executed for her opposition to King Fernando VII in the 1830s, and where fascist Falangists assassinated playwright Federico García Lorca for his leftist leanings and his homosexuality in the 1930s. The fountain remains unseen, but the flow of its water, the tears, is heard during the opera.

Lorca wrote a play, Mariana Pineda, about the revolutionary who inspired him, and his muse, Catalonian actress Margarita Xirgu, herself homosexual, created the title role. Ainadamar tells the stories of these three political figures to music that, eclectically yet immensely creatively, fuses Spanish and Latin American dance rhythms, the earthy, guttural sound of flamenco singing, plangent Jewish and other liturgical strains, synthesized sounds, and a pure operatic line with a simplicity reaching back to Renaissance music. Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s helped to realize this lyric tapestry effectively. Sound was by Mark Grey.

The opera begins on the day of Xirgu’s death. As she prepares to play Pineda on stage, in Uruguay, where she now lives, once more, her student, Nuria, asks her to recount the circumstances of her first encounter with Lorca. Soprano Dawn Upshaw, for whom Golijov has written extensively, played Margarita Xirgu for all she was worth, bringing complete commitment of body, soul and voice to her portrayal, from the vigorous young idealist to the older actress, who left Spain long ago, but, literally prostrate with grief, relived Lorca’s death with the consuming pain of one who thought she could have saved him. Both she and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, en travesti as a poetic and fiery Lorca, drew on everything from the darkest hues of their voices, their gutsy answer to the sound of flamenco, to the lightest and most lyrical in lines that might have come from a Monteverdi work at the dawn of opera. They engaged in a gentle reverie about Havana, where Xirgu is to play Pineda and tries, in vain, to induce Lorca to join her and escape the Falangists’ wrath. Soprano Jessica Rivera, as Nuria, joined them for an exquisite trio, as she and O’Connor reassured the dying actress that she has kept Lorca’s revolutionary spirit alive by passing it along to her pupils.

Soldiers, in camouflage uniform, devised by costume designer Gabriel Berry, prowled the stage menacingly in director Peter Sellars’ intense production. One of them, sympathetically played by resonant bass Ricardo Lugo, urged Lorca to confess his sins before he dies, but O’Connor’s tearful Lorca, insisting he has not sinned, asked forgiveness instead for the enemies who have sinned against him. A harsh voice from above (flamenco singer Jesus Montoya) called for Lorca’s execution: “He’s a faggot” and “He’s a lover of Russia,” death having been decreed earlier for “Marxists, Masons and Jews.” Consistent with the fascists’ homophobia, a soldier killed Lorca by firing bullets repeatedly into his rectum and Upshaw’s dying Xirgu fearlessly confronted the assassin, accusing him of hating the freedom that she, like Lorca and Pineda, represents, even as he and his ilk themselves benefit from it.

An ensemble of young women, portraying Xirgu’s pupils, sang the ballad of Mariana Pineda, to lines taken from Lorca’s play, gutturally, prayerfully, urgently and forcefully in turn, as the plot dictated, at various points during the opera. Berry garbed Upshaw and her disciples classically, in black shifts that would not have been out of place in Greek tragedy or any of the various Orfeo operas. The action was set against an evocative, primitive-looking background, in earth tones, designed by Los Angeles painter and performance artist Gronk and lit by James F. Ingalls.

Osvaldo Golijov & Dawn Upshaw. Photo by John Sann/DG.

Rose Hall, Broadway at 60^th Street