Catalina Cuervo and I had never met, but I felt I knew her as soon as we connected for a chat on Zoom. She reminded me of the Latinas I grew up with in my family and all around L.A. – in all the best ways. There was anima whenever she spoke of things she liked: music that resonated with her was “sooo beautiful” or “increíble”; there were never “a lot” of things she had to say, but “a million.” I was amazed to learn that she is also a rocker as well as an opera singer. I poured a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch. As our conversation flowed, it was more like I was catching up with a prima who had been away for a bit than meeting someone new.

William Berger: Tell me about what you’re up to.

Catalina Cuervo: We’re doing the opera Frida by composer Robert Xavier Rodríguez at Michigan Opera Theatre ­­­- our second round there. The opera was kind of sleeping for a little bit after its 1991 premiere [in Philadelphia], and then we did a huge revival back in 2015 in Detroit. The arts institutions were celebrating Frida Kahlo: The Detroit Institute of the Arts had an exhibition of her and [husband] Diego Rivera, the ballet and symphony were doing pieces on her, and David DiChiera [the late founder of Michigan Opera Theatre] thought it would be a good time to do a big revival of this piece. He hired an amazing team that I love, and it was a huge success. Now it’s a five-year celebration from that time, plus a little extra time for COVID delays. [She laughs sadly]. I’m excited to see everybody else again.

WB: What’s different about performing it now?

CC: I AM the role of Frida at this point. In 2015, I didn’t have any role models for the work. It was as if we were doing the world premiere. But I’ve been performing Frida for six years now, all over, I know this role and everybody’s role in the piece like 100%.

WB: What about for us in the audience? How will we experience it today in a different way from before?

CC: The main message of this piece – besides getting to know Frida a little bit more – is her last sentence: “Viva la vida,” which is “long live life,” or even “yay life!”  All of us are going through a very difficult moment with COVID. Life just got so hard. The message is Viva la vida AS IT IS. And Frida had to deal with problems with her health, and accidents, and more. But she was always saying, “but I love life, I’m going to continue fighting la Muerte, and live every second of this life, with all the problems and difficulties, and health problems.” I think it’s a great message for this moment.

WB: Órale. What about you and Frida, the woman. Was she always in your life?

CC: I’ve known Frida since I was little because my aunt is a painter herself, a feminist, who always worked, even in those times when women didn’t work. She was a little bit like Frida. I remember her talking all the time about Frida, about her paintings, her beauty, a million things. I grew up adoring Frida. I didn’t think I could love her more. But then I got into the work of really knowing her, reading all the books on her, seeing documentaries, reviewing footage of her, and the more I knew about her, the more I loved her.

WB: How did Frida speak to you as a Latina?

CC: When we’re young we look up to women that are similar to us. You don’t understand yourself, you’re all confused, the hormones are everywhere, and you think “who the hell am I, what am I going to do with my life?” So I was looking up to women – all artists: musicians, painters, what they were able to accomplish in their time. A lot of people want to judge Frida as if she lived in 2020. Frida lived a hundred years ago, in a country, Mexico, like Columbia, and all Latin America, where they are way more conservative, and machistas, which I don’t know how to say that in English.

WB: We say macho, I think. But speaking of women and men, let’s talk about Frida and Diego. Now, my great-uncle was a curator at the Bellas Artes Museum in Mexico City, and he was ALL about Diego Rivera. And when I went to Mexico City, I’ve never been more moved – not even in Rome – by spaces filled with paintings than I was with Rivera’s works. My uncle helped enshrine Rivera, not only as artist but also as a symbol of Mexico. Young people don’t realize it now, but back then and there, you only ever heard about him, not her. Then, at a certain point, I only heard about Frida. Suddenly, people were saying “I didn’t know her husband was famous too.” And then in Detroit there’s another way of looking at him, since he’s such a presence here. But who is she in relation to him, and not in relation to him?

CC:  First of all, I say about Frida and Diego something unusual: I adore that relationship. I defend Diego very often. For people a lot of Latin American people he comes first, she comes second.

WB: Yeah, especially in Mexico.

CC: Exactly. But in the United States it’s mostly the other way. There is Frida and then oh yeah, that’s her husband. And they love to talk about how he was unfaithful and put him as the bad guy – which I don’t agree with it. If Diego didn’t decide that he was going to make her famous, we wouldn’t know of her. He always thought that she was a better painter than him. He talked to all the big millionaires to buy her art. He pushed her to go to France and meet all the other surrealists. He said to Picasso “You think I’m good? You have to check out Frida. She’s amazing. Nobody paints faces like her.” Her journey with him makes me very proud of her. She was much younger than him, he’s a big star, she’s nobody… she marries him, she is supposed to cook for him and be the way couples were back then. But then she comes to the United States and starts to become a woman on her own, and to have opinions on her own. And she starts to paint her own paintings. When she died, only 47, she decided to stay with him, but she was an independent woman. Her art was independent from him. Her name was independent from him. That’s the way I see the relationship.

WB: I get that from her art – she’s trying to claim her space as a woman, her female anatomy. How much of that is in the music?

CC: [Frida Composer] Robert Xavier Rodríguez is Mexican-American and the music reflects different influences. It has a lot of folkloric music, but it also has romantic and contemporary, even bel canto moments, with some Broadway and opera and zarzuela, and that’s like Frida herself. One of the most fascinating things about Frida is that she was constantly telling you where she comes from. Her father was 100% German. Her mother was half Indian, half Spanish-Mexican. So Frida was this mix, and she adored that. Look at her eyebrows. At the time, women used to do wear their eyebrows like a tiny line. She hated that. She loved her thick eyebrows. They showed her Jewish and German side. Then her dresses… very folkloric, Mexican styles, because she thought she didn’t want to dress like las gringas in the United States. She is telling you “I’m Mexican, I’m German, I’m Jewish, I’m Catholic…”

WB: You’re speaking to me right now because I’m mixed – Jewish, Mexican indigenous, and Mexican white, Catholic, and I grew up needing to say, “I’m not ‘diluted,’ I’m authentically ALL those things!” So this is all really exciting to me, here, today.

CC: It’s exciting to me, too… owning who you are and where you come from and showing the world the beauty of what you are.

WB: Tell me about your mission is with this project.

CC: My mission is to elevate the position of Latin American music with this, not only in the United States but everywhere. People don’t take Latin American music as seriously as they take other music – not right away. I’ve been involved with the music of Astor Piazzolla and Daniel Catán and seen how people embrace it once they open up to it. And I want Frida to do that too. Here, and everywhere in the world.