The Metropolitan Opera in New York City premiered 'El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego)', an opera about Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, composed by Gabriela Lena Frank with a libretto by Nilo Cruz. The production, directed by Deborah Colker with set design by Jon Bausor, debuted in San Diego in 2022 and has since been staged in San Francisco and Chicago. Concurrently, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened a complementary exhibition, 'Frida and Diego: The Last Dream', featuring works from its permanent collection arranged as a stage set for the opera.
This collaboration between an opera house and a major museum is rare, highlighting the enduring cultural and political significance of Kahlo and Rivera as 20th-century icons. The article critiques the opera for prioritizing spectacle and romantic biography over the artists' actual lives and political commitments, including their ties to the Mexican and Russian Revolutions and Trotskyism. However, it praises Frank's score, which recently won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for her symphony 'Picaflor: A Future Myth', for blending pre-Columbian, Latin American, and European classical elements.