Opera in Panama helping build a cultural environment

By Katherine Monahan

A visit to the home of Opera Panama is like stepping into a church, but a detail-oriented church propelled by machine-like determination. 

The light from the Pacific comes into the glass-fronted living room, across the couches.  On the mirror behind the antique piano is written “Amateurs practice until they get it right.  Professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.”

Director Irena Sylya possesses a marvelous poise and the kind of interior beauty that shines from the truly devoted.  “One of the highest cultural arts is opera,” she delivers with the clear, deliberate diction and posture that her craft has cultivated.  “Opera is a banner for maintaining the emotional contact that is so important for human beings.”

Opera Panama is her creation, and her attempt to develop Panamanian culture to a higher level.  She envisions a school and a theater, here in Panama City and also in Pedasi, with regular top-level opera productions, European professionals coming to teach master classes, and Panamanian students receiving scholarships and traveling to Europe for further study. 

The concept is to develop a classical arts society, not only in singing but also in drama, stage production, dance, symphony, and all aspects of classical performance.

And she has come an amazingly long way toward achieving these goals, in just the five years since Opera Panama’s inception.  “You have to be a little bit crazy to want to do this,” she smiles.  “Luckily I have that qualification.”  With three performances on the horizon, European singers making last-minute changes to their travel plans (at one point she had to excuse herself from our interview to return a call from an Italian tenor who was asking if he could bring his wife along), and a full schedule of students, Sylya was up working last night until three in the morning.

Sylya arrived in Panama in 2006 with very little Spanish or local contacts, just a fierce determination to start an opera company.  When she and her husband first considered moving to Panama, she told him it was impossible because Panama didn’t have an opera scene.  His response was, “Well you’ll just have to create one.”

“I am very very thankful that I did not know what it took (to do this),” she says, “because if I had known, I never would have done it.  And I am very very happy to be involved . . . to be a part of Panama.”  

Sylya’s faith in Panama is moving.  “Panama has a beautifully bright future in culture,” she insists.  She likens it to a cork that has just been released from a drain at the bottom of the ocean, shooting up with unstoppable speed.  With all its economic development, Panama needs cultural and artistic development to make it shine on the world stage.

Sylya performed throughout Europe and the U.S. for decades as a dramatic soprano.  Now she calls in favors from her network of opera professionals, bringing master teachers and soloists to Panama, and arranging for rising Panamanian talents to train in Europe.  The workload is immense; the rewards are beautiful.  And Opera Panama is growing.

Young Panamanian soprano Diana Duran received a scholarship to study in Vienna under international soprano Mirella Freni, and Yaisury Rodriguez will soon travel to Germany to apprentice under Andraes Bileny as a stage manager.  Meanwhile Opera Panama is inviting elementary school classes to attend its dress rehearsals for free, and giving fund-raising performances for local charity organizations.

“I really appreciate what Opera Panama is doing for young Panamanians who like classical music,” says tenor Alfonso Baysa, who is training with Sylya for his performance in next month’s production of Tosca.  “I really want to do this.  It is not easy.  But if something is easy, why do it?”

Basking in the inspiration of Opera Panama’s efforts, there is no answer to that question.  Only a disciplined, indefatigable march toward a lovely goal.  “Come to the opera,” says Baysa.  “For sure you will cry.  If you don’t cry, you don’t have feelings.”

This month Opera Panama will be presenting  Puccini’s Tosca. Full  details will published in Newsroom  later in the week.