‘Florencia en el Amazonas’ Review: Exuberant Spanish Singing at the Metropolitan Opera

New York

The Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas,” which had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on Thursday, is well-traveled; it has had several productions and been seen in numerous opera houses since its 1996 world premiere at the Houston Grand Opera. There are reasons for its popularity—lush orchestration, ear-pleasing vocal lines, a romantic story—and as one of very few operas in Spanish, it’s a good choice for companies eager to attract Spanish-speaking audiences. It is the Met’s first opera by a Latin American composer and only its third Spanish-language offering (the previous ones were in 1916 and 1926). The resurrected New York City Opera imported a production from Nashville to give the opera its New York premiere in 2016.