Rosas Divinas EST. 2004
Photo: Sylvia Elzafon
Rosas Divinas are North Texas' first all-female mariachi ensemble. While the group was co-founded in 2004, Tabitha Orta became the groups sole director in 2006 taking the group to another level.
It Is A Mariachi Mashup! -DFW'S FIRST ALL FEMALE ENSEMBLE TAKE OF WAGNER AT THE SOL LUNA ARTS FESTIVAL
Guadalajara-based visual artist Gonzalo Lebrija grappled with this dilemma when creating Mariachi Wagner for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s SOLUNA Festival in 2018, in collaboration with composer Jesús Echevarría. The all-female ensemble Rosas Divinas performed a 40-minute program of Wagner excerpts that Lebrija considered an ideal experiment in revealing the similarities between cultures through music. During initial rehearsals, though, the “Wagner” element dominated the music. “It felt false,” says Lebrija. The creative team adjusted the arrangements so that the mariachi flavor came through. Only when it approached both traditions with equal respect could the fusion take honest shape.
Last year, a cell phone video of the Rosas Divinas made its way to the home of mariachi music – Jalisco, Mexico – and it ended up in the hands of visual artist Gonzalo Lebrija.
He long had a crazy idea to mash up mariachi with classical music — like Wagner. And he thought Rosas Divinas would be perfect.
“I heard there was mariachi by women,” says the Jalisco native, “And immediately I was like, ‘this is perfect!’ I mean, it’s very rare and very uncommon.”
One day before the show, all the parties meet for the first time to rehearse at Moody Performance Hall in Dallas. Echevarría and Lebrija watch quietly as the women work through kinks.
Horns blast out notes. The strings section try to find the right pace. And the guitarrón, guitar and vihuela players help everyone keep up with tempo as they add traditional mariachi finger picking into the piece.
“So we’re trying to merge the two [genres] together and try to make it little more of our own,” says Orta. “We want to see if we make it to where they’re more like mariachi sounding songs as opposed to us trying to emulate a symphony. We’ll never be able to do that with just 13 of us.”
By show time, Lebrija is pleased, ““It’s a translation. And something comes out of it. I think that’s the importance of the work. It’s like they interpreted Wagner with their style. It’s something magical.”
At the time of Wagner’s death in 1883, he was still reworking ‘Tannhauser.’ He felt his opera was still incomplete. Maybe it just needed two artists from Mexico and a dozen female mariachis to put their spin on it. -Hady Mawajdeh
Rosas Divinas Musical Director, Tabitha Orta (trumpet) added her creative touch to Jesus Echvarria's arrangements by incorporating a few carefully placed golpes and mariachi rhythms such as polka, huapango.