Erin Nafziger, soprano | Paul La Rosa, baritone | Julie Rumbold, mezzo | Joshua Gurwitz, tenor Karen Schwartz, piano | Todd Reynolds, violin | Ronald Lively, clarinet | Harrison Dilthey, bass | Jeremy Winchester, director | Henry Echeverria, set design | Amy Echeverria, costume design Dan O'Connell, sound | Shaun Laframboise, Camera | Joe Aidonidis, camera/editing

Synopsis

The Weeping Woman is based upon the relationship between Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, who was Picasso’s “official mistress” from 1935-1943.

Born Henriette Theodora Markovitch, Dora is a poet, photographer, and painter in her own right and affiliated with the French Surrealists when she meets Picasso. The opera charts the course of their relationship beginning with their first meeting at Deux Magots, a Paris restaurant frequented by the Surrealists, where she catches Picasso’s attention by taking a knife and playing with it between her fingers on a tabletop.

Picasso desires Dora and finds her physically attractive and intellectually stimulating, and they become lovers and collaborators even though Picasso is also in a relationship with Marie-Therese Walter, his “secret concubine,” with whom he has sired a child.

In the end, though, Picasso abandons Dora, and in the final moments of the opera, she strives to feel a sense of closure and freedom in her life.