By Michael Zwiebach, Correspondent | San Francisco Chronicle
West Edge Opera unveiled another triumphant world premiere, opening its season with Nicolás Lell Benavides (Albuquerque Academy Class of 2006) and Marella Martin Koch’s opera “Dolores.” Telling the story of a pivotal year in the life of labor activist Dolores Huerta, the show is dramatically tight and musically transporting — a work made to last, though it’s also undeniably timely.
Benavides and Koch’s take on the politics of the 1968 strike of California’s grape pickers is unabashedly progressive and they indulge in the lightest moment of agitprop when, at the end of the opera, Huerta (mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra) chants the United Farm Workers mantra “Si, se puede” and motions for the audience to join in. On opening night, Saturday, Aug. 2, at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center, many did. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (tenor Alex Boyer) is pictured as heroic, while Richard Nixon (tenor Sam Faustine) is a creep. Yet librettist Koch stays close to the historical record, even using the historical characters’ own words at times.
