Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace 

Speaker 2 (00:02):
When she came to the United States, she wore her Tijuana outfits. She wore her flowers on her head, and she didn't wear what ladies back in the time used to wear no. She was like, no, no. This is me. This is what I wear. It's fascinating. I love it. 

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell Iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Soprano Catalina Cuervo, who is singing the role of Frida Kahlo in Cincinnati Opera's production of Frida, which opens on June 23rd. In conjunction with this production, the Cincinnati Art Museum has posted an online exhibition of photographs of Frida by Bernard Silverstein Catalina, and I will be looking at these photos during the episode. So look along with us by visiting Cincinnati art museum.org/frida. And one of the reasons we wanted to have you here is to look at our online exhibition of photographs of Frida Kahlo, and I'm so excited to hear how you react to them. 

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, I was very surprised. Two weeks ago, I met the photographer's son, which he lives here in Cincinnati, 

Speaker 1 (01:40):
And 

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Somebody told me that I was going to meet him first, and then I was like, oh, I'm going to go look at those pictures because for my study, I've seen so many pictures of Frida and I feel like I've seen them all, but I'm not really, really sure which ones are the photographers. So I went and saw the specific collection of this photographer, Mr. Silverstein, and I knew all those pictures. 

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Oh, you had already seen them? 

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yes, I knew most of those pictures. And they are amazing. He went to Mexico and spent time with them. They became friends and he was there with them. In the pictures, you can see Frida was very poy in a lot of pictures. It was from that era where people would just pose. It was a painting, it was a portrait. But in those pictures, you can see a little bit more of her loves. And her, I love the pictures of her bedroom actually. They're fascinating. And there's not many pictures of her bedroom, mostly about her and her bed, but not her bedroom. And you can see her fascination with death and all kinds of weird things all over her room. It is really fascinating. 

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, I think so the photographer, Bernard Silverstein, he really often is catching a lot of the scenery around that. 

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Exactly. 

Speaker 1 (03:03):
So that's one of the things I noticed about the photos is that you have Frida, you have Diego, but you have all these fascinating details in the background. And in some of his letters, he talks a lot about the decor in the house, and so you get the impression that he was very fascinated by that. So I think it's a very conscious choice that he kept all of that in the frame. You could have zoomed in on just them, and we would've lost a lot of that detail, 

Speaker 2 (03:28):
But 

Speaker 1 (03:28):
He was so fascinated by all those strange 

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Tchotchkes 

Speaker 1 (03:34):
And folk art that she had and the collection. So it's really fascinating. So I'll just talk a little bit about the online exhibit. So it's all photos from our collection, so we own prints of these, and one of the challenges of photography is that you can't keep things out very long. Photos are very light sensitive, and so online exhibitions, this are a great way for us to show works that are a little tricky to show in the museum. And so this was a really cool thing that they put together. And this photograph, I feel like I've definitely seen it before. We're 

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Looking at I love that picture. Yes. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (04:20):
We're just looking at, it's just a straight up portrait of Frida and she's just in front of this backdrop of cloth. It's pretty straightforward. 

Speaker 2 (04:31):
First of all, the light, I'm sorry, of this picture is absolutely perfection 

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Because 

Speaker 2 (04:38):
The focus is her face and you can see her shadow in the back is really, I don't know. It's really, really beautiful picture. Now you see two things that are familiar with Frida. See every time in her portraits is her gaze is very straight point looking at something specific you could say, is Diego standing there? 

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Who is standing right there? What is she looking at? Is she looking at what are her beloved things in her bedroom? So her eyes, one of the things that Frida had that everybody talked about was her gaze. Her eye was just penetrating to something. And the other thing is a little pout that she did for her mouth that you can see in all of her portraits, and it's both very sensual, strong, and just her face with that pout, it's almost like you're like, is that a woman? Is that a man? And it is just fascinating. 

Speaker 1 (05:44):
It's a very powerful expression. 

Speaker 2 (05:45):
It was very powerful, very powerful expression. She 

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Looks in this photo to me, very in charge. 

Speaker 2 (05:50):
She was always in charge, 

Speaker 1 (05:51):
And this is maybe a silly comparison, but as I've just now, I just put this together as I'm looking at this, this expression is almost like dead on a Beyonce expression. I saw Beyonce in concert and she came out and she just froze and she just looked at everyone and it was the kind of silliest thing ever, but it was kind of a amazing too. And she just looks around. 

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I agree. I went to Beyonce's concert too, 

Speaker 1 (06:18):
And 

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Same thing, 

Speaker 1 (06:19):
But she does that saying that it's almost a smile. It's so close to a smile, but not quite. She's about to crack the smile there, but it's still, she's kind of, she knows something. She's got a little secret or something that she's not telling you. But yeah, the light you were talking about the way her head is sort of surrounded by this halo 

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Almost 

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Effect of the light in the background. Yeah, it's very painterly. It's 

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Beautiful. It's just so that picture is so perfect. 

Speaker 1 (06:54):
It's 

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Really gorgeous. 

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Well, you see that sort of effect happening a lot in paintings because of course it's easier to go in and just paint that. Let's 

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Paint that than you actually capture that on a photo 

Speaker 1 (07:07):
To set it up just right where you have that little burst of light coming out before her, and then it creates that great, she just cuts such a nice silhouette in front of it. And then the other thing that pops out immediately to me is that white rose right in the middle of her hair, those 

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Flowers. Yes, yes, yes. 

Speaker 1 (07:26):
I guess you've been wearing a lot of them these days, or 

Speaker 2 (07:29):
I do. I do. Frida loved flowers. Loved flowers, loved what they meant, because flowers for Frida were love, were sensual, were sex, were showed the woman's body and sexual parts, let's say. But for her, it was a representation of the beauty in it, and she loved wearing her flowers in her head, and she loved to wear ribbons and all other things. That is also from her heritage also because she was very proud of her Mexican and Indian heritage and the love for nature. It's iconic here with this picture. He's showing not only that strength in her face, but the flowers, her love, the love of her life. 

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Well, and it's another thing that a lot of the photos capture and what so many people have always talked about with Frida is her sense of fashion and the way she has built this style that is both rooted in a tradition, but then it's also very original. She's kind of mixing traditions as well. She's like pulling from this region and this style, and she's totally doing her own thing and just totally owning it. 

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Owning it. One of the things was most fascinating about her and in a time, this one is Frida was from both Mexican Indian heritage and German, and she was very proud of being Mexican and of having that, when you see the way she dressed in her Tijuana outfits and her hair, it's a combination, like you said, of both things. Her outfits come from the Tijuana outfits, the dresses that the people in the town wear, the Mexicans wear, and then her braid. Her braid is not a Latino thing. It's actually a German thing. 

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Her 

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Grandmother used to wear the braids, and Frida decided she looked very much like her grandmother, by the way. The eyebrow comes from her German grandmother. 

Speaker 1 (09:45):
She 

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Looked exactly like her German grandmother. So she was like, I'm going to wear my braids just like my grandmother and my Tiana outfits, my Mexican people. So it's amazing that she owned to who she was, where she was from, and she was proud of it, and she wanted to just show everybody that. And just when she came to the United States, she wore her Tijuana outfits. She wore her flowers on her head, and she didn't wear what ladies in the fashion lights back in the time used to wear no. She was like, no, no, this is me. This is what I wear. It's fascinating. I love it. I love that attitude about her. 

Speaker 1 (10:23):
We can look at a different picture. I love this one actually. So we're looking at a photo now of Frida, and she's working on a self portrait, and then Diego is standing behind her. It's kind of like menacing. I don't know. To me the way he's just looming there. I don't know. I went to art school and I remember just hating painting and somebody standing behind you is so infuriating. So to me, that's what I mean. Maybe she was 100% comfortable with 

Speaker 2 (10:57):
It. I think they were just posing 

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Probably 

Speaker 2 (10:59):
For the photo. But Diego was Frida's number one fan. Diego told everybody that the greatest painter in the world was her, 

Speaker 1 (11:10):
That 

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Nobody could paint a face like Frida did. So here is just the photographer showing to us how fascinated Diego was with Frida, which by the way, Diego at the moment was the greatest muralist of the world. So to have the greatest be looking at another painter and be absolutely fascinated by her and her paintings, it's amazing. That's why I love this picture so much. Now look at the painting behind, 

Speaker 1 (11:43):
And there's one coming up that shows her probably not really working on it, but again, pretending to work on it. But yeah, there's this big painting in the background of a sort of last supper esque scene, and it's a little hard to see in this one, but you get a really good shot of it in one of the future photos where it's got some really bizarre details. 

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, it's beautiful. The whole Frida was fascinated by death, fascinated, and it's also in the Mexican tradition, they adore the death and then they do the renda, which is the offers to the death, and they believe in the afterlife. And for them, death is not something bad, and it's not the end of something. It's actually the beginning of something better. So Frida and Diego, probably, if we're looking at this picture and I assume is in their house or their studio in San Anhill, we're probably looking at a painting that they had in their house of the last supper with skeletons. 

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, 

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Really amazing. 

Speaker 1 (12:55):
So we skipped ahead, but actually that's one of the benefits of this is we'll come back to that one. So we will look at the photo of her working on this painting. Again, probably not. We're talking about how a lot of these are posed. One of the giveaways that this is, she's probably not really working on this painting, is that it's already framed. 

Speaker 2 (13:15):
You 

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Traditionally don't work on paintings after they're framed because you don't want to get the paint. All that's a after it's well done and dried step. But yeah, you get these figures beside her, the skeleton, that sort of, and then this what they call a Judas figure, which again brings it back to the Last Supper. But the Judas figures, which are used in these parades, and they have a photo before this one, we kind of skipped past of her standing imposing with all of her collection, and she's got this giant Judas figure that would be covered in those parades where they cover them in fireworks and blow them up at almost like an effigy. 

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, it's amazing. 

Speaker 1 (14:05):
And it's got this little tiny strange head. It's so odd. But the photographer was really obsessed with these Judas figures in the house. 

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (14:18):
He took several of 

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Them. He commented on it that he was really striking by the fact that she had two, that one and the one on top of her bed. Her 

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Bed, yeah. So we'll skip ahead since we're talking about it. Yeah. So this photo, again, this is one of those great, when we're talking about the way he frames these photos to me, I just love how much space he devotes to the room, 

Speaker 1 (14:42):
And it would be very easy to really zoom in on Frida at this moment. I think that would be most people's instincts, and I think that's what makes him an interesting photographer, is he's looking at this whole scene. And that's the kind of mental math that photographers have to do very quickly that I don't think a lot of people take into consideration sometimes is they have to figure out in an instant what is interesting about this scene to them. So to him, he's like, okay, well she's down here, but then there's this bed and it's got this really tall canopy and there's this weird skeleton Judas figure resting on top of it. 

Speaker 2 (15:22):
I think that he's one of the only ones, I don't know of other pictures that really show their space 

Speaker 1 (15:30):
Like 

Speaker 2 (15:30):
That. This is fascinating. You can see everything about, yeah, like you were saying, he was capturing the whole space, not just Frida there, but her space. It's amazing. 

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Well, in thinking too about her history and how much time she spent in bed and after her big car accident, or the bus accident I should say, where she's sort of stuck in bed and she has so many surgeries, and so she spends a lot of time in bed. So to think about this sort of image of death, like hovering above the bed, it gives so much weight to the bed in that space and almost like, I don't know, it's really full of a lot of, I don't know, pathos or something. Yes, 

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Fascinating. 

Speaker 1 (16:18):
It's really great. Well, we can go back a little bit. Skipped ahead a bunch to look at. I love this. 

Speaker 2 (16:24):
I love that one. 

Speaker 1 (16:25):
So we're looking at another sort of portrait of her again with way more stuff in the background. You see all this pottery and little dolls and things, and then she's wearing this costume that she was painting herself in the self-portrait with Diego. You see her wearing this costume, and I've forgotten which region of Mexico it's from. 

Speaker 2 (16:47):
So it has a description here in the picture that she says, I've never been to pic, so it will be pic. Nor do I have any connection to the town, but of all Mexican costumes, this is the one I like best and that's why I wear it. So this is her favorite outfit, the Ana outfit from Ate Pick, and probably because it's so dramatic, the costume itself is just so dramatic, and 

Speaker 1 (17:25):
She was 

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Fascinated with it and loved wearing it. 

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Her face is sort of framed like a flower, 

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Like a flower, even a goddess kind 

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Of thing or sort of merry 

Speaker 2 (17:40):
The 

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Big. Exactly. That kind of sort of 

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Such 

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Drama around it. Yeah. We're talking again about halos around her head in the other photo. So I was reading, I can't remember if it was in here or in some notes about how apparently this tradition they believe, I mean it could be apocryphal, but that there was some shipwreck or something near Mexico, and these women found these petty coats that had wash up on shore and they didn't know how they were supposed to be worn, so that was what they turned it into, this bonnet kind of thing. 

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Oh, really? That's where that comes from. 

Speaker 1 (18:18):
That's the legend. Yeah. I don't know if it's, 

Speaker 2 (18:21):
I didn't know that. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (18:22):
So it's almost, if you imagine it's why it's like, it's almost like a dress that's been pulled 

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Up. Yeah, basically she has a skirt in her 

Speaker 1 (18:30):
On her face. On 

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Her face too. 

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah. Great. Again, though, I love that, that seems like a very free to thing. To be inspired by is something that's just like, well, I'm going to take this thing and make it my own and 

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Own it. If you look at the picture, she's like, I'm wearing this and I own it. Own it. This is amazing. She feels amazing. She feels good with herself right there. 

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Oh yeah. 

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah. 

Speaker 1 (18:54):
So it's so great to just, I don't know. I love that sort of idea of taking this other culture's fashion and then wearing it in a completely different way and just being like, nah, this is how we like to do it. It's nice. Yeah. This is how it goes. Let's skip through here. And you know what, I didn't realize that's really it for the photos we have, 

Speaker 2 (19:16):
But 

Speaker 1 (19:17):
There's a letter 

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Here to talk to you a little bit about this one. Okay. So this will be for the people that are hearing us is the one where she's with the big, big painting, 

Speaker 1 (19:27):
The one that, it 

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Seems like a last supper, and I noticed something very cute, which is in the painting, she had kind of a last supper with people or elements that she loved very much. 

Speaker 1 (19:45):
So 

Speaker 2 (19:47):
To her left or to our left, 

Speaker 1 (19:50):
You 

Speaker 2 (19:51):
See both Christina's children, so those are her niece and her nephew. 

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Okay. 

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Which she loved them dearly because if a little bit of a frida's tragic history is that after the accident she wasn't able, her uterus was not able to hold babies in, so she will get pregnant, but the body will just release them because they couldn't hold them. So she actually had more than we know of six or seven miscarriages, but God knows how many, and she was very, very hurt by that. Her niece and her nephew were everything for her. She loved them so much. It was, it was her own kids. It was Christie's, her sister's kids, she loved them. Then to our right, we see a skeleton, which is the representation of death, which Frida actually loved. She loved dead. We see that. So it's really, really awesome. And then of course her in the middle of her painting looking very 

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Beautiful. 

Speaker 2 (21:02):
Her self 

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Portrait. 

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Who's, it's almost like her hair is being pulled up. I can't tell. Is that by the skeleton or is it just sort of some other, I think 

Speaker 2 (21:12):
The skeleton is probably lap Palona, which lap Frida used to call Lap Palona is the bald one, A bald woman, let's say. But so she used to call Death Lap the bold one as a funny way to call death. So lap Palona, she'll always say that Lap Palona played with her in life because there was so many instances where she was going to die and she wouldn't die and she's going to die and she wouldn't die. So it was like, oh my God, lap is playing with me. 

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Death 

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Is playing with me. So that's what that is. 

Speaker 1 (21:47):
That's crazy. Yeah. That's funny. It's the way showing that by kind of tugging at her hair, pulling at it. That's 

Speaker 2 (21:53):
So 

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Funny. Wow. So this is your second time playing Frida? 

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yes. Second production. Second 

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Production. Well, yeah, this time. All right. When did you first play her? 

Speaker 2 (22:06):
We did the same production in Detroit in 2015. 

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Okay. 

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Couple years ago with Michigan Opera Theater. 

Speaker 1 (22:14):
So you've been two years now with Frida? 

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, we did. We did it back two years ago. We did it in three different theaters, about 11 or 12 performances. It was a long run, and then I kind of put it on hold a little bit, and then we are back at it this year with Cincinnati Opera. Very excited to be able to play that role again. For me, it's a dream come true because I admired her long way before I even got this part. When I went to Mexico, I was fascinated with her house, and I went and I bought every single thing about her books, all kinds of things about her. I was fascinated with her before I even got the part. 

Speaker 1 (23:02):
And I'm just curious about, I listened to just a little bit of, I think the concert suite just before we were talking, and I was just trying to think in what ways do you think the music reflects the spirit of Frida? Are there parallels between the music in the opera and her art? 

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Definitely, definitely. And I think this is where you see that Robert, Javier Rodriguez, the composer, did an amazing job with this music because when you hear the opera, you just hear it. You don't see anything. You just hear it. You immediately feel in the presence of her. And the way he captured that was by the composition of the voice. So I'm going to get a little bit more in detail about it, just like the portraits where you see Frida very strong, where we were talking about the Beyonce look, 

Speaker 2 (24:01):
A lot of her own portraits that her own that she did, and her photos show a very strong Frida and almost very serious Frida. But on the other hand, if you see videos of her with Diego or with her friends and stuff like that, you see a very loving, almost delicate, sweet Frida. So everybody talked about these two personalities. It's not that she was bipolar, it's that she was everything. She was both strong and weak, and she was both a woman and a man. And she was like that all the time. She was sweet when she had to be sweet, and she was strong when she had to be strong. And the way Roberta Rodriguez put that in the music is that I actually sing with two different voices. I do many parts of it. I sing it in my chest voice, which for those that don't know what the chess voice is, basically your regular voice, the one where you sing pop music, 

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Or 

Speaker 2 (25:04):
When you sing Happy birthday, that's your chess voice. And musical theater, for example, everything that is Broadway is sang with your chess voice. So I sing whole scenes with my chess voice, which show a more sensual, stronger Frida. And then there's whole scenes where I sing in my lyric voice. My lyric voice is the one of the soprano, my opera voice, and it's completely different. And those scenes, I am the more delicate, loving Frida, and he did that. So it's difficult vocally because I have to sing in both voices and be switching from one scene to the other. Or even in the same scenes, I switch voices. And it sounds like two different people are singing one line, and it is not that it is just capturing frida's personality. 

Speaker 1 (25:58):
You kind of were sort of hinting at this when you said she's both a woman and a man, and Frida is a, maybe I shouldn't say famously bisexual artist, but that's something certainly important to me. And I was sort of curious if that gets talked about in the opera. I also know it's from 1995, so I wasn't sure we 

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Talk about it, or 

Speaker 1 (26:18):
1991, right? 

Speaker 2 (26:19):
1991. 

Speaker 1 (26:20):
91, yes. 

Speaker 2 (26:21):
We talk about it. We actually have a beautiful scene. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's one of my favorite scenes where we show that she had both men and women as lovers. Frida believed that sexuality didn't have to be uncaptured in that, oh, I am a woman that likes men, or I am a woman that likes women. Or no, it was like sex is sex. And she enjoyed her body. She enjoyed sex to the point where for her men and women could make her feel good, and she could make both men and women feel good too. So you'll say she was bisexual. She just loved 

Speaker 1 (27:05):
In 

Speaker 2 (27:05):
General without any restrictions in that sense. And we do portray it in on our opera too. 

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, that's great. 

Speaker 2 (27:13):
That's 

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Great to hear. I was curious about that. 

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yes. 

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Well, did you have anything else you wanted to talk about or share about the photos or the opera or anything else? 

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yes, just about the photos. I'm so excited to know that the photographer's son lives here in Cincinnati, and I was able to meet him, and I'm very excited that the New museum is doing this online exhibition of this amazing pictures with all the information about it, because they're different than anything else you see out there. Like we were talking about you see her space, where they lived and how they lived, and her fascination with the decoration part, 

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Let's 

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Say. And also the relationship between Diego and Frida. So I love that, and I'm really looking forward to seeing this pictures actually right in front of me. 

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, you've mentioned a couple of times, Bernard Silverstein. He was a local photographer, so that's why we have this connection with him and taught photography at the University of Cincinnati. So yeah, it's a really cool connection between Cincinnati and this moment in history that maybe is not so known about. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Catalina. 

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Thank you so much for having me. 

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, that's great. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we are also excited to offer free parking Special exhibitions on View right now are a shared legacy folk art in America, William KenRidge More Sweetly Play the Dance Tiffany Glass painting with color and light. And don't miss Art After Dark Cam Carnival on Friday, June 30th from five to 9:00 PM celebrate the opening of a shared legacy folk art in America with carnival games. Live music from well seasoned specialty cocktails and food for purchase from the Terrace Cafe. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Our theme song is Efron Music by Balal. And if you liked our show, how about rate and review us on iTunes? I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.