The Role of a Lifetime — Erin Leigh Koolman

When I was an undergraduate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania I took a class my Sophomore year called Music and Literature Survey. This course was a hybrid class where we discussed not just music but the literature that inspired it. Or at least, that’s how my 30-something brain remembers a class she took over 10 years ago. What I do remember vividly was the discussion of Federico García Lorca’s play “Blood Wedding.” I remember being completely wrapped up in the concept of duende and mesmerized by the flamenco interpretation of the play. At its most basic duende is a heightened state of passion and emotion. Duende is also a creature in Spanish and Latin American folklore, who appear as goblin-like creatures.

Then and now I struggle with defining duende, even though I could feel it when I heard or saw it then, just as I am certain when I hear or see it now. Perhaps Lorca himself puts it best in his Theory and Play of Duende.

“Duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.”

Finding this force in everything I do and create has been almost a singular drive for me in my performances. I live for those moments when I am not entirely myself, but something far grander. That same semester I decided to audition for and add the performance degree to my music education course load. I don’t claim that it was this class and this lecture that triggered the decision, but clearly something had awakened in me and I could not ignore it.

Over a decade later I find myself preparing to sing the role of Lorca himself in Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar. Even before I was cast I was obsessive over the idea of stepping into Lorca’s shoes, even if just for a time. The day the cast list came out, I feverishly hunted down biographies, poems, plays, any resource I could find to help me know the man and his art. The more I read the more I find Easter Eggs in my own life that have lead me to this moment. The Salvador Dalí print of his painting “The Sacrament of Last Supper,” that much more meaningful now knowing of the personal connection between himself and Lorca. Even in way Lorca describes his parents, as gaining his intelligence from his mother and his passion from his father, is always how I’ve recognized the two halves of me.

Dad and I at Fusion Restaurant in Aruba Summer 2021

I hope I don’t come across as hyperbolic when I say that I truly believe this experience will fundamentally change me. I am filled with such fear and excitement to take on this role and fully commit myself to the performance. I am humbled to have been chosen for this honor and I hope for the short time I spend looking at life through Lorca’s eyes I hope I can convey to you how important it is to find your own means of transcendence.