December 9,
1531 (Saturday). Early in the morning, Juan Diego, a
Chicameca convert to Christianity in his fifties, is on
his way to attend Mass at Tlatelolco, the site of the
final battle of the Spanish conquest ten years earlier.
As he passes Tepeyac Hill, Juan Diego hears music and a
woman's voice calling to him. At the crest of the hill
he sees a radiantly beautiful woman, who reveals that
she is Our Lady, the Mother of God. She instructs Juan
Diego to go to the local bishop and tell him that a
temple should be built in her honor at the base of the
hill.
Juan Diego
proceeds directly to Tlatelolco and the palace of Bishop
Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan friar. The bishop
receives him, but is reluctant to believe Juan Diego's
story. A discouraged Juan Diego returns to Tepeyac Hill,
and admits his failure to Our Lady. She directs him to
again go to the bishop, and repeat her request.
December
10, 1531 (Sunday). Juan Diego returns to the bishop's
palace. The bishop questions him for a long time, and
finishes by telling Juan Diego that he needs a sign to
believe that Our Lady sent him. On his return to
Tepeyac Hill Juan Diego tells her of the bishop's
demand. She promises to fulfill it the next day when
Juan Diego visits her again.
December
11, 1531 (Monday). Juan Diego fails to go to Tepeyac
Hill, because his uncle has become gravely ill. Juan
Diego spends the day looking for someone with healing
skills, but fails in his search. He tells his dying
uncle that he will go to Tlatelolco the next morning to
return with a priest to hear his final confession.
December
12, 1531 (Tuesday). At a very early hour, Juan Diego
rushes to Tlatelolco to find a priest for his uncle.
Not wanting to encounter Our Lady because he missed her
the day before, and not wanting to be delayed in his
search for a priest, Juan Diego takes a path on the
other side of the hill. However, Our Lady comes
directly down the hill to meet him. She listens to Juan
Diego's excuse for not keeping his appointment and tells
him, "Your uncle will not die of this sickness; he is
healthy." She instructs him to go to the hill top and
gather the flowers he finds there. Juan Diego obeys and
discovers a miraculous garden of Castilian roses which
he gathers and takes to her. She arranges the roses in
his tilma (a coarse cloak made from cactus
fibers), and tells Juan Diego to take them to the bishop
as the sign he requested.
When Juan
Diego arrives before the skeptical Bishop Zumárraga, he
opens his tilma and the roses fall to the floor.
However, Juan Diego has more than roses as a sign, for a
portrait of Our Lady appears on the coarse fabric of the
tilma. The bishop and his whole household are
filled with amazement. The Bishop and people fulfill
Juan Diego's request, and build a temple dedicated to
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Librettists' Note One:
The Dramatic Context
The
libretto for "Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Roses," while
following the general outline of the traditional story
of Juan Diego's encounter with Our Lady of Guadalupe,
differs in some points for dramatic and musical
reasons. The changes were made with much consideration,
and with full respect to the traditional story and the
beliefs of the many who cherish it.
The
libretto compresses the story time into a twenty-four
hour period from dawn on Saturday to sunrise on Sunday.
This time line puts Juan Diego's greatest crisis in the
darkness of night and the resolution of the miracle on
Sunday morning. To heighten dramatic tension, Bishop
Zumárraga and the people have been given the function as
skeptical and increasingly hostile antagonists to Juan
Diego and his efforts to fulfill his mission. The
character of the ambiguous La Malinche has been brought
to the forefront to create a balancing soprano voice to
the mezzo-soprano Our Lady of Guadalupe, the tenor Juan
Diego, and baritone Bishop Zumárraga.
The
characterization of Our Lady was designed to emphasize
her similarities to Juan Diego. This choice was made
not to diminish her sanctity or stature, or minimize the
devotion given to her by countless millions through the
millennia, but to emphasize her essential humanity.
Through relating to her on a human basis, Juan Diego's
love and trust in her blossoms. His encounter with Our
Lady is simultaneously mystical and prosaic. We must
remember that Roman Catholic theology teaches that Mary
is not divine, but the ultimate sanctified human.
While the
Gospels have little to say about the life of Mary, we
can make reasonable surmises about her. When pregnant
with Jesus, Mary was a young Jewish woman living in the
provincial backwater of Judea under the rule of a harsh
invader, imperial Augustan Rome. Like Juan Diego's,
Mary's society was in constant turmoil as an
imperialistic invader tried to control a restless,
conquered people.
Mary's
family must have been of modest means, her father most
likely a farmer, small tradesman or craftsmen. Like Juan
Diego, her clothes were probably simple, and she most
likely went around in sandals or even on bare feet. In
an age when literacy was rare for men and rarer for
women, it cannot be assumed that she knew how to read.
Mary's skin was most likely dark, like most women of
desert Judea. It should be noted that the role of Our
Lady was written specifically for mezzo-soprano Isola
Jones, who is of African American and Native American
ancestry.
Ultimately,
because Mary is not different from him, Juan Diego can
relate to her and love her on human to human basis, not
as subject to queen or servant to goddess. It is
through this common humanity and shared experience that
Juan Diego is transformed by his experience with divine,
and becomes its messenger to his people and Church.
The
interlude of the dying uncle was deleted to maintain
emphasis on the growing conflict between Juan Diego and
an increasingly hostile and autocratic Bishop and the
growing mob violence of the people. This conflict, with
its threat of mortal consequences for the protagonist,
is the fire in which Juan Diego's faith and love of Our
Lady is tested and purified. Arising from his struggles
with fear and doubt, and supported by Our Lady's belief
and trust in him, Juan Diego becomes the vehicle for the
personal transformation of the Bishop and the people,
and the establishment of a new society.
"Credo" is
Latin for "I believe," but an examination of its
Indo-European roots uncovers a hidden and richer
meaning. Credo is comprised of two sounds; "cre"
meaning "heart" (analogous to the French word "coeur"),
while "do" means "to place" (the root for words like
donate). Thus, the word which we translate into English
as "I believe" ultimately means "I place in my heart."
In this sense, this libretto was written to present Juan
Diego as a humble man whose belief came from his heart,
a simple man of faith not needing miracles to believe,
trust, and love his Lady.
Librettists' Note Two:
The Historical Context
In addition
to the rich spiritual meanings and layers to the story
of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a distinct socio-political
meaning exists. Many consider this story a peace treaty
between the conquered natives of Azteca and the
overlords from imperial Spain. The image of Our Lady,
with it syncretic blend of Catholic Christian and Aztec
symbolism, provided common ground for these two
antagonistic cultures, and was instrumental to the
formation a new society.
The Historical Background
to the Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe
According
to traditional Catholic accounts of the Guadalupan
apparition, during a walk from his village to the city
on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw a vision of a Virgin
at the Hill of Tepeyac. Speaking in Nahuatl, Our Lady of
Guadalupe asked him to build an abbey at that site. When
Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de
Zumárraga, the bishop asked him for a miraculous sign to
prove his claim. The Virgin asked Juan Diego to gather
flowers, even though it was winter when no flower
bloomed. He found Castillian roses, gathered them on his
tilma, and presented these to bishop Zumárraga.
When he presented the roses to Zumárraga, the image of
the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted
on the cloth.
The image
of Our Lady of Guadalupe is often read as a coded image.
Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract "Imagen de
la Virgen María," described the Virgin's image as the
Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's
Revelation 12:1: "arrayed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars." Mateo de la Cruz, writing twelve years after
Sánchez, "argued that the Guadalupe possessed all the
iconographical attributes of Mary in her Immaculate
Conception". Likewise, a 1738 sermon preached by Miguel
Picazo argued that the Guadalupe was the "best
representation" of the Immaculate Conception.
Many
writers, including Patricia Harrington and Virgil
Elizondo, describe the image as containing coded
messages for the indigenous people of Mexico.
"The
Aztecs...had an elaborate, coherent symbolic system for
making sense of their lives. When this was destroyed by
the Spaniards, something new was needed to fill the void
and make sense of New Spain...the image of Guadalupe
served that purpose."
Her
blue-green mantle was described as the color once
reserved for the divine couple Ometecuhtli and
Omecihuatl; her belt is read as a sign of pregnancy; and
a cross-shaped image symbolizing the cosmos and called
nahui-ollin is said to be inscribed beneath the
image's sash.
A number of
documents support the apparition account. In 1648 Miguel
Sanchez, a diocesan priest of Mexico City, published the
book "Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de
Guadalupe." This version was written in Spanish and
contains the first presently known account of the
Mexican appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Sanchez's story was written mainly for Mexican-born
Spaniards and contains long sections of biblical
analogy.
However,
the most important version of the apparition account may
be the Nahuatl-language "Huei tlamahuiçoltica" ("The
Great Event") which contains "Nican mopohua" ("Here it
is recounted"), a tract about the Virgin which contains
the aforementioned story. It also includes two other
sections: "Nican motecpana" ("Here is an ordered
account") which describes fourteen miracles connected
with Our Lady of Guadalupe and "Nican tlantica ("Here
ends") which gives an account of the Virgin in New
Spain. "Huei tlamahuiçoltica" closely mirrors the
Sanchez narrative, but contains no biblical analogies.
It is also composed of a more fully developed dialogue
due to Nahuatl custom and manners in speech patterns. "Huei
tlamahuiçoltica" is said to have been written by Antonio
Valeriano in 1556; it was printed in Nahuatl by Luis
Lasso de la Vega in 1649.
The
apparition account is also supported by a document
called the "Informaciones Jurídicas" of 1666, a
collection of oral interviews gathered near Juan Diego's
hometown of Cuautitlan. In this document various
witnesses affirm, in interview format, details about
Juan Diego and the Guadalupan apparition story.
Encounters
similar to
Juan Diego's early morning
vision on a hilltop where a Lady appears and asks for a
Church to be built on that hill. His vision of
Our Lady of Guadalupe is in
many aspects similar to the case of Saint
Bernadette Soubirous's
reported vision of
Our Lady of Lourdes in 1858.
Both reported a miraculous Lady on a hill who asked them
to request that the local priests build a chapel at the
site of the vision. Both visions included a reference to
roses and led to large churches being built at the
sites. Like
Our Lady of Guadalupe in
Mexico,
Our Lady of Lourdes is a major
Catholic symbol in France.
A simple,
14 year old peasant girl of no significant education,
Bernadette Soubirous reported
her vision of a women in white, who said, Que soy
L'Immaculado concepciou, I am the Immaculate Conception
and asked that a church be built there. Ridiculed,
questioned, belittled by Church officials and other
contemporaries, she firmly but modestly insisted on her
vision. Eventually the Church believed her and she was
canonized by Pope
Pius XI in
1933. Over time, many churches
were built on that hilltop (one of them, the
Basilica of St. Pius X can
accommodate 25 thousand people) and Lourdes is now a
major Marian pilgrimage site.
The three
Portuguese children,
Lucia dos Santos,
Jacinta Marto and
Francisco Marto were equally
young and without much education when they reported the
apparition of
Our Lady of Fatima in 1917.
The local administrator initially jailed the children
and threatened that he would boil them one by one in a
pot of oil. Eventually, with millions of Roman Catholic
believers, the reported visions at Fatima gathered
respect and after a canonical enquiry the visions of
Fatima were officially declared "worthy of belief" in
October 1930 by the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima. Popes
Pius XII,
John XXIII,
Paul VI and
John Paul II voiced their
acceptance of the supernatural origin of the Fatima
events.
