the rough voice of tenderness
by Douglas Messerli
Dorian Wood XAVELA LUX AETERNA /
Alberto Montero, conductor / the performance I saw with Pablo Capra and Paul
Sand was at Redcat (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) on November 22, 2019
In a period of just 2 months I have now
attended 3 solo concerts in 3 different theaters of major singers performing in
languages other than English: in October I attended, at the Wallis Theatre in
Beverly Hills, a production of Brooklyn Rider and Megos Herrera singing in
Spanish and Portuguese; in November I saw the glorious Julia Migenes singing
French chansons at the Odyssey Theatre; and last night I attended Dorian Wood
performing XAVELA LUX AETERNA at Redcat,
On
stage was a rather large barrel-chested man (Wood, who clearly prefers, as
evidenced in the program, the pronoun “they”) dressed in a long white dress and
earrings singing, along with a string quartet (made up of Madeline Falcone,
Emily Cell, Cassia Streb, Isaac Takeuchi, with percussion by Marcos Junquera,
and synthesizer backup Xavi Muñoz) songs sung by the great Mexican-Costa Rican
singer Chavela Vargas, "la voz áspera de la ternura" (“the rough
voice of tenderness”).
Beginning as a street singer, Vargas was known for wearing masculine
clothes, smoking cigars, and toting a gun. She was beloved by many in the
literary and art world and was rumored to have a sexual affair with painter
Frida Kahlo.
As
Dorian Wood’s baritone voice, moving sometimes to a strong tenor, reveals with
lovingly rough tenderness, passionate, often almost ululating plaints, “they”
are absolutely stunning, while at the same time incorporating Vargas’ famed
songs along with other Costa Rican compositions, dug up, apparently by Wood’s
musical director, the Spanish-born Alberto Montero, who at one point joins
Woods on stage with guitar in a truly lovely, quiet love song.
After listening to just a couple of Wood’s powerful songs, you quickly
forget that “they” are not of the feminine sex, and begin to feel that “they”
may have actually channeled the great Mexican-Costa Rican singer Vargas, an
utterly amazing transformation since Wood doesn’t look anything like the singer
herself.
In
a sense, what Wood has been able to do is to turn Vargas’ singing and masculine
identity upside down, to retrieve the deep femininity within her then-radical
lesbian demeanor. It is almost as if, dressed in a white quinceañera-like dress
“they” reprieve the deep sexuality of the original singer.
What was just as fascinating to me, as an outsider, not fluent in
Spanish, was how the audience—a nearly full-house made up, obviously, of a
large group of folks of Central American and Mexican heritage—clearly knew the
songs “they” were performing. Only in major US metropolitan communities and
border towns might you find an audience who could easily join “them” in singing
one of the last songs “they” performed. My friends, Tony winner Paul Sand and publisher/editor
Pablo Capra were equally delighted by the entire ambience of the evening.
At
a time when immigration has increasing been vilified, it was truly wonderful,
as I again realized, to live in such a remarkably diverse city. Wood, born to
Costa Rica parents in Los Angeles, had his mother in the front row, and, after
a much-deserved demand for an encore, brought up “their” mother to the stage to
break open the large piñata that had been hanging over the entire proceedings.
The
small, handsome woman, took several powerful swings and opened it, pouring what
appeared to be small papers instead of any candy treats; the audience,
fortunately, had already had almost all the sweet treats we could endure for
one night. This time the standing ovations (and there were several) were truly
deserved.
Los Angeles, November 23, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and
Performance (November 2019).
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