CULTURE · OPERA
Key Facts
—The broadcast. The Metropolitan Opera transmitted El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego globally on Saturday, May 30, closing the Live in HD 2025-26 season.
—The Brazilian creator. Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, founder of Cia Deborah Colker and Cirque du Soleil veteran, directed the Met-premiere staging.
—The cast and composer. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings Frida, baritone Carlos Alvarez sings Diego, with music by Pulitzer-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and libretto by Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
—The wider Frida moment. The Museum of Modern Art is running a companion exhibition through September 12, and the new Frida Kahlo Museum opened in her Mexico City childhood home this year.
—Latin American impact. The work is only the fourth Spanish-language opera in Met history and brings Mexican subject matter to a global audience.
The Met Opera closed its 2025-26 Live in HD season on Saturday with a global transmission of El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego, directed by Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker. The Met Opera production gives the Mexican painter couple a magical-realist Day of the Dead frame, written by Pulitzer-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank with libretto by Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings Frida and baritone Carlos Alvarez sings Diego.
What the Met Opera broadcast showed audiences
El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego, in its English version The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, runs as a reversal of the Orpheus and Euridice myth. The action opens in a Mexican cemetery on the Day of the Dead, with families decorating altars for their loved ones.
Diego Rivera, sung by Mexican baritone Carlos Alvarez, wanders in distraught and yearning to see Frida again. Frida, sung by Argentine-American mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, finds herself at peace in the spirit world, free of the physical pain that marked her life.
Music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted the Met-premiere staging. The production reuses set designer Jon Bausor’s malleable universe, with imagery drawn from the painters’ own works integrated into the staging.
Deborah Colker and the Brazilian direction of the Met Opera staging
Deborah Colker founded Cia Deborah Colker in Rio de Janeiro in 1994 and built one of Brazil’s most influential contemporary-dance companies. She made her Met debut in 2024 with another production and returned this season for the Frida y Diego staging.
Her Cirque du Soleil credit, OVO, premiered in 2009 and toured more than 30 countries through the 2010s. The work cemented her reputation outside Brazil and opened the door to operatic commissions, of which the Met staging is the highest-profile.
Colker has described this production as a dream rather than a biography, choosing imagery and movement that echoes the painters’ visual language without literal scene-setting. The work is choreographed throughout, with set imagery treated as a third character.
The Met Opera score by Gabriela Lena Frank
Gabriela Lena Frank, the Peruvian-American composer, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2025 for an unrelated chamber work. El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego is her first opera, premiered at the San Diego Opera in 2022 and revived since by the San Francisco Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The libretto is by Nilo Cruz, the Cuban-American playwright who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Anna in the Tropics. Together the composer-librettist team becomes only the second pair of Pulitzer winners to collaborate on a Met-premiered work this century.
The opera is only the fourth in the Spanish language to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera House. The Met has staged operas in more than two dozen languages in its history, but the Spanish-language repertoire remains underrepresented relative to Italian, German, and French.
The wider Frida moment around the Met Opera production
The Museum of Modern Art opened a companion exhibition titled Frida and Diego: The Last Dream on March 21, running through September 12. The MoMA show features five paintings and a drawing by Kahlo plus over a dozen Rivera works from the museum’s collection, installed by the opera’s set designer Jon Bausor.
The Met has also coordinated a city-wide programming arm called Mexican Culture Across New York. The framework brings restaurants, public-space activations, and partner cultural organisations into the opera’s run window, which extends through June 5 at the Met itself.
In Mexico, the new Frida Kahlo Museum opened earlier this year in her childhood home in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City. The institution complements the Casa Azul, the painter’s adult home that has been a Frida-dedicated museum since 1958.
Why the Met Opera Frida moment matters for Latin America
The Met Live in HD season reaches more than 70 countries through cinema partnerships. Brazilian audiences saw the broadcast through Cinemark, Cinepolis, and the UCI network.
Mexican audiences watched through Cinepolis and other partners.
The Saturday transmission was the season closer, the institution’s highest-profile global broadcast date. The choice to give that slot to a Spanish-language work directed by a Brazilian and depicting Mexican painters carries a deliberate signal about the company’s repertoire orientation.
For 2026-27, the Met has signalled further Latin American programming, including new commissions in development. The Frida y Diego production itself is expected to return in repertoire across the next several seasons.
Who directed the Met Opera Frida y Diego production?
Brazilian choreographer and director Deborah Colker. She founded Cia Deborah Colker in Rio de Janeiro in 1994 and previously created OVO for Cirque du Soleil in 2009.
Who wrote the opera?
Composer Gabriela Lena Frank, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Music, and librettist Nilo Cruz, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama. It premiered at San Diego Opera in 2022.
Who sings the lead roles?
Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings Frida, and baritone Carlos Alvarez sings Diego. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted the Met-premiere staging.
How can audiences in Latin America watch it?
The Met Live in HD season is broadcast via cinema partnerships in more than 70 countries. Brazilian audiences watch through Cinemark, Cinepolis, and UCI.
Mexican audiences watch through Cinepolis.
Is there a companion exhibition?
Yes. The Museum of Modern Art opened Frida and Diego: The Last Dream on March 21, running through September 12.
The MoMA exhibition was installed by Jon Bausor, the opera’s set designer.
For more on Latin American visual arts programming, see our coverage of São Paulo’s MASP Museum dedicating 2026 to Latin American Histories. For the wider Brazilian cultural moment, read our piece on Brazilian cinema’s two-year prestige run.
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