Music by Federico Moreno Torroba
Libretto by Federico Romero and Guillero Fernández Shaw
Adapted by Jorge Parodi
November 13 | 7:30PM (Free Chamber Chat at 6:45PM | Dr. Chad Gasta)
November 15 | 2:00PM (Free Chamber Chat at 1:15PM | Eric Einhorn)

Performances at The OperaDelaware Studios
Performed in Spanish with English and Spanish supertitles
Running time: 1 hour

Fernanda, an intimate chamber version of the beloved Luisa Fernanda, is a story of love, flirtation, jealousy, and second chances. Fernanda’s quiet life is turned upside down when a love from her past unexpectedly returns. Caught between an old flame and a new admirer, she finds herself at the center of a romantic tangle where hearts change, loyalties are tested, and jealousy is never far away.

Because sometimes the love we thought we left behind is the one we never stopped loving.

With special narration by Robin Martínez, a voice Wilmington audiences know well from Máxima La Primera.

Produced in partnership with Opera Hispánica.

the Cast of Fernanda

The Creative Team of Fernanda

Lighting Designer - Tláloc López-Watermann
Production Stage Manager - Sarah Lillian

Argentinian opera director Malena Dayen returns to OperaDelaware this November to direct Torroba's Fernanda, following her company debut directing the world premiere of Derrick Wang's Fearless in 2025. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Dayen is a Spanish music and tango specialist who has performed this repertoire with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, in venues including Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall and the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute. Her recent directing credits include Aida and the first-ever U.S. production in Spanish of Menotti's The Medium with Fort Worth Opera, as well as critically acclaimed productions of Roméo et Juliette, Carmen, and Frida with Opera Naples. A 2022/23 Princeton Hodder Fellow, she recently directed and performed in Firesongs, a new piece by Thomas Cabaniss that premiered at Chelsea Factory in collaboration with National Sawdust. Dayen holds an MFA from CUNY Brooklyn College in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, as well as a Master of Music and a Professional Studies Diploma from the Mannes College of Music, The New School. Dayen is a director on staff at The Metropolitan Opera.

Pianist and Conductor Julian Grabarek is a highly sought after collaborator on opera productions nationwide. Mr. Grabarek is a Company Artist with OperaDelaware, serving as Resident Coach and Conductor. This fall, he will music direct OD’s chamber productions of Fernanda and Amahl and the Night Visitors and is assistant conductor for their mainstage production of Don Giovanni. Later in the 2026/27 season, Mr. Grabarek will join Opera Philadelphia as a guest coach and harpsichordist for the world premiere of Sitcom by Luke Styles.

In the 2025/26 season, Mr. Grabarek joined the music staff of Des Moines Metro Opera (Associate Conductor, Of Mice and Men), OperaDelaware (Pianist and Coach, Andrea Chénier), and San Diego Opera (Vocal Coach, Carmen). From 2023-2025, he was an Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera, where he worked as a member of the music staff on The Magic Flute, Carmen, Idomeneo, and the widely acclaimed world premiere of Huang Ruo’s The Monkey King.

Mr. Grabarek is currently on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and in 2027 joins University of Michigan, Department of Voice & Opera as a Visiting Lecturer of Vocal Coaching. In addition to his work in opera, Mr. Grabarek regularly collaborates on recitals with both vocalists and instrumentalists, performing a wide range of repertoire, with a particular passion for the music of Mozart and Czech composers.

Federico Moreno Torroba's Luisa Fernanda premiered at Madrid's Teatro Calderón on March 26, 1932, and it is considered the final great flowering of Spain's beloved zarzuela tradition before the form began to fade from the popular stage. Torroba drew on the legacy of zarzuela grande and the lighter género chico that preceded him. Luisa Fernanda has an emotional range and scale that none of its models quite achieved. Musically, the work is a showcase of casticismo in which Torroba deliberately cultivates a spirit of pure, popular Spanish nationalism. The result is a score full of vivid Spanish color, laced with the grace of Viennese operetta and the emotional heat of Italian verismo. 

The opera unfolds against the real political turmoil of 1868 Spain, as the regime of Queen Isabel II teeters under pressure from a rising republican movement. At the center of it all is Luisa Fernanda, the innkeeper's daughter, whose fiancé Javier has grown distant and ambitious, far more interested in his own rising star than in her. When the wealthy landowner Vidal Hernando arrives in Madrid looking for a wife, Luisa flirts with him but warns him plainly: her heart belongs to someone else. Javier, meanwhile, falls under the spell of the seductive monarchist Duchess Carolina, abandoning both his republican sympathies and Luisa at the same moment. Hurt and humiliated, Luisa turns to Vidal, who instantly declares himself a revolutionary for her sake and proposes on the spot.

What follows is a story where romance and revolution become impossible to separate. At a charity festival, Carolina tries to buy Vidal's political loyalty and fails; Luisa, stung by Javier's arrogance, publicly chooses Vidal over him. As the republican uprising gathers force, Vidal fights bravely in the streets, not out of political conviction, but purely for love of Luisa. Javier, fighting for the other side, is captured and nearly executed by the mob, saved only by Luisa's intervention. When the monarchist forces ultimately triumph in this battle, Javier walks off arm in arm with Carolina, and a wounded, victorious-in-love Vidal wins Luisa's promise of marriage.

Years later, with the revolution finally successful and the wedding to Vidal imminent, a broken Javier returns to beg Luisa for one final meeting. She admits she still loves him, but resolves to honor her word to Vidal. It is Vidal himself, watching her anguish, who makes the opera's most generous and devastating choice: he releases her from her promise, encourages her to go to Javier, and is left alone on his estate with nothing but the memory of the woman he loved and lost. Luisa Fernanda endures as one of the most beloved works in the Spanish music theater tradition.