Florencia Composer Daniel Catán Dies, Suddenly, at 62

Mexican composer Daniel Catán died suddenly in his sleep this past Saturday. He was young, 62, and no one I talked to could account for his death, no one even knew if he was sick.

If he was best known for his opera for Los Angeles Opera based on the Italian film Il Postino, Seattle Opera audiences no doubt remember him as the composer of Florencia en el Amazonas which had its Seattle debut in 1997.

As it happens, I was working in the public relations department at Seattle Opera at the time and got to know Daniel and work with him. It was a seminal moment for the Opera, one of the first newly commissioned operas done under General Director Speight Jenkins, who co-commissioned the opera with Houston Grand Opera and Los Angeles Opera.

Catán, in town to promote the opera, was always kind, charming, and surprisingly candid and frank. (In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed simply calls him a “mensch.”) He was always available to meet the press and, better, always had something interesting to say.

Waiting outside the KUOW studios for an appearance, the producer came out to prep him.

“What should the host say is your profession?” The producer asked. “Are you a musician, dramatist, composer?”

“I am an opera composer,” he said.

The producer laughed then quickly realized the laugh was a serious social blunder, apologized, and led Catán in to the interview. It was funny. “Opera composer” seemed anachronistic, like saying you made typewriters or buggy whips.

But he was an opera composer and a fine one at that.  Some Seattle Opera staff members were worried that it would be hard to sell tickets to Florencia, (it’s usually harder to sell tickets to new works) and it did start off slow, but by the end of the run there were people clamoring for seats. The opera had caught the public’s imagination and word of mouth drove sales. It was so popular, Speight brought it back a few years later and people loved it all over again.

Even for an opera composer, Catán was a bit of an anachronism. Where other composers of his generation went for discordant or “contemporary” music, Catán favored lush, romantic scores. He claimed Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an unabashedly romantic composer who scored Errol Flynn swashbucklers in the 1930s, was one of his idols. But Catán wasn’t old-fashioned or nostalgic; his music was packed with emotional fire and, particularly for Florencia, he worked in instruments like the djembe or Peruvian pan pipes. His work was praised for its romanticism and his return to romantic music may have, in time, led to a resurgence of similar music. (Seattle Opera’s last new commission Amelia had gorgeous, romantic music by Daron Hagen.)

He was in other ways a distinctly modern composer who took as his source material the writing of Octavio Paz for Rappaccini’s Daughter, the works of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, and the writer (Oh, writers!) of the screenplay of Il Postino. Written for Plácido Domingo and commissioned by Los Angeles Opera, Il Postino was a massive hit. I can only hope that it arrives in Seattle in the near future.

Catán’s death at such a young age is an incalculable loss. He passed away in Austin, Texas, where he was working on the score and libretto for an opera based on Frank Capra’s 1941 film Meet John Doe. It beggars the imagination how he could have made an opera out of that relentless lump-in-the-throat movie, but if anyone could do it, Catán could.

He knew how to find his way to the heart of any story.