Act Two opens on a more jubilant note, with Diego and Frida travelling to the States, where he has been asked to paint murals in several big cities, including New York. With paparazzi pursuing Diego, Frida is, literally, left in the shadows (Michael Mazzola’s lighting design is pitch-perfect: monochromatic in the cityscape; vivid hues elsewhere).

It’s no surprise, then, that the artist opts for booze and taking lovers, her duets lively, frenzied and escapist. But reality rules, and when Diego includes a portrait of Lenin in his work, he’s ordered to leave the country.

Back in Mexico, with Diego spending more time in the studio and Frida’s health in decline, she keeps painting. Here, her fantasy garden is upended when her 1944 masterwork, “The Broken Column,” comes to life as a tortured Floor Eimers, clad in that famous white corset, moves affectingly, while “The Two Fridas,” an iconic work from five years earlier, is embodied by the Victorian dress-wearing Naira Agvanean, looking suitably uncomfortable.

With moments of misery flowing into more upbeat scenarios—a Mariachi-type band oompahs from the pit—only to return to bleakness, the penultimate scene features a furious Frida learning that Diego is having an affair with her, gulp, very own sister, Cristina (Zhang). Supremely depressed and hooked on painkillers, Frida dies, but whether from suicide or, as officially listed, from a pulmonary embolism, nobody knows. 

The work’s final image is that of Sakamoto’s delicate bird taking oh-so-tiny steps atop a black cube, with Kahlo, a continuing symbol of female liberation, now free from pain and her earthly body.

An extraordinary work on all levels, “Frida,” with its hard-working cast of nearly 50, is a triumph that raises the bar(re) for story ballets, and should be required viewing for anyone interested in dance, theater, contemporary music, high art, or the human condition.