SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — “Hotel Moctezuma,” has been awarded the prestigious FEDORA Award, which recognizes innovative opera and dance productions worldwide.
It is the first time a Mexican-produced opera has been given this honor.
“This is an acknowledgement that on one hand, serves to inspire us to continue on this creative path, but it also represents a great responsibility with the European audiences, instrumental in us getting this award, but for what it also represents for Mexico,” Carlos José Pérez Sámano, who wrote “Hotel Moctezuma,” told El Sol newspaper in Mexico City.
“Hotel Moctezuma” is a multi-language opera about Xóchitl, a Mexican girl who moves to Venice with her fiancé and begins exploring the sites.
The couple stays at the same hotel where composer Antonio Vivaldi created the opera “Montezuma” in 1733.
The girl soon discovers her room is haunted by the Mexican emperor and begins having conversations with him.
Diana Syrse is the musical composer for “Hotel Moctezuma.”
“Being Mexican I believe, as writer Juan Villoro once said, ‘is a bottomless pit,'” Syrse said. “We have to be more conscious that there are a lot of artists in Mexico with all the potential to create this type of complex art.”
“Hotel Moctezuma” debuted at the National Opera Orchestre Montpellier Occitanie in France and Poland’s National Grand Opera Theater.
The production is expected to go on a worldwide tour in 2026 and 2027.
“There are times sponsors are reluctant to support productions like ours because they don’t know how audiences will respond,” Pérez Sámano said. “This paradox has been broken by getting this award showing that audiences do want this type of content and are open to contemporary artistic forms.”
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