Opera Dreams up the Final Encounter Between Kahlo and Rivera

El Ultimo Sueño de Diego y Frida on stage at the MET Opera

Photo: Marty Sohl / Met Opera

Frida Kahlo famously pasted away at the age of 47 in her home, La Casa Azul, which today is the Frida Kahlo Museum. Her husband, Diego Rivera, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship until the end, later stated that her death was the most tragic day of his life. Composer Gabriela Lena Frank and playwright Nilo Cruz imagine what one last encounter between the two artists would look like in the opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (translation: The Last Dream of Frida and Diego) now playing at the Met.

The opera is framed around Day of the Dead in 1957 (the year of Kahlo’s death), with Rivera yearning for Kahlo to return to the land of the living once more, sensing his own death is close (Rivera would die weeks later, on November 24). However, Kahlo is not entirely convinced, as her return would bring back both the physical and emotional pain she experienced throughout her life. “I’ve suffered two serious accidents in my life: one was the tram,” she said about the traffic accident that caused her lifelong injuries, “and the other was Diego. Diego was the worst of them all.”

The volatile nature of their relationship is intertwined with references to their work, which are also present in the stunning set design. “She’s convinced to come back because she actually wants to see her art and she wants to see her house and she wants to visit the world again, you know?” mezzo soprano Isabel Leonard, who plays Kahlo, told NPR. “She loved the world and she was in love with the colors of her home and the animals and the market. She had such passion, I think, for all of those things, including for Diego.”

Sung entirely in Spanish, Frank opted to make traditional Mexican music a delicate narrative motif rather than the backbone of the score. The opera is directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker, who previously oversaw the 2024 production of the Grammy-winning opera Ainadamar. The cast is rounded out by Spanish baritone Carlos Álvarez, who plays Rivera; Gabriella Reyes, who plays the role of la Catrina, the guardian of the dead; and Nils Wanderer as Leonardo, an actor who shares Kahlo’s artistic vision.

To further immerse viewers into the world of Kahlo and Rivera, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) launched an exhibition titled The Last Dream in tandem with the production. Curated from MoMA’s own collection, the exhibit features five paintings and a drawing by Kahlo, as well as over a dozen pieces by Rivera and photographs of the pair. Tending a bridge with the stage production, The Last Dream boasts an imaginative setup created in collaboration with John Bausor, the set and co-costume designer.

El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego is currently running at the Met through June 5. If you’re not in New York, the Met will broadcast the opera in cinemas around the world on May 30.