Ayre

A living tapestry of cultures in conversation.

Sensual, volatile, and deeply human, this genre-defying work allows centuries to collapse into a single breath: the intertwined voices of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Spain before rupture, before exile – before silence. Inspired in part by the charged stillness and heat of the painting El Jaleo, the staging leans into the tension between restraint and eruption. Featuring sung and spoken texts in Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Sardinian, and English in a production that physicalizes intimacy and immediacy, Ayre conjures a flickering, unstable world where faith, longing, and identity are constantly negotiated in real time.

Ailyn Pérez, one of the world’s leading lyric sopranos, returns to BLO for the first time since her performance as Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro in the 2006/07 Season. Hailed by The New York Times as “a beautiful woman who commands the stage” and “a major soprano,” Ms. Pérez is in demand at the world’s leading opera houses and cultural capitals. Internationally celebrated for her signature artistry, as the winner of the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, Ms. Pérez became the first Hispanic recipient in the award’s history.