While Eréndira helps her dress, the grandmother reminisces about her husband Amadis and son of the same name, who made their living smuggling and are both long dead and buried in the courtyard of the palace.
She works so hard that she falls asleep while walking, carrying a soup pot, and drops it in shock at the sound of a bell.
Meanwhile, the grandmother recruits more suitors, including a poor postman who is supposed to advertise for her in return.
Another man, Ulysses, wants to take Eréndira for himself completely, but cannot pay the remaining debt of 871,895 pesos calculated by the grandmother.
Although Eréndira suffers badly from the abuse, the grandmother assumes that she will only have paid off her debt in "eight years, seven months and eleven days".
Only when Eréndira is close to death from exhaustion does the grandmother drive the last ten waiting men away.
The young man goes to the monastery, receives the blessing and puts a white wreath on Eréndira's hair at the wedding ceremony.
Ulysses brings the grandmother a birthday cake "with 72 little pink candles", which she eats with great relish.
Although Ulysses had poisoned the cake with copious amounts of arsenic, the grandmother does not die but enters a delusional state, fantasising, dancing and singing in a hoarse voice.
Only when he slashes her belly does he reach his goal: "A green fountain pours out of grandmother's womb.
[1] She herself explained this as follows: So I have not only integrated a linearly functioning story or libretto into my music, but also the becoming and growing of this living space, which Márquez knows how to realise so comprehensibly in his texts.
The figures and the instruments, which show and seek themselves in many reflections from the genesis to the definitive transformation of the material, respond to this in the permanent play of an almost hallucinatory spiral impulse - in the form of an organic structure in which each element carries the germ cell of a new story within itself.|author=Violeta Dinescu|source=Über die Entstehung meiner Kammeroper Eréndira|ref=[2]According to the composer, the composition contains a "Romanian signature" on all levels, which can be seen "in the interval repertoire, in certain tone sequences, certain harmonies and time sequences".
She considers the quarter-tone intervals and the complex rhythmic structures not as a contemporary technique, but as a stylised continuation of the ancient tradition of the songs of Romanian peasants.
[5] In the second scene, when the grandmother forces her granddaughter into prostitution for the first time, the partly sung, partly spoken bargaining for her virginity remains textually intelligible at all times, despite the large instrumentation used here, with all strings, percussion, harpsichord and woodwinds.
The grandmother's "mad coloraturas", for example, correspond to her delusional state; the part of the submissive Eréndira, on the other hand, often seems strongly restrained or somnambulistic.
Musical devices in the instrumental movement include "string flageolets in extremely high register, oscillating Spaltklang of the winds, discreet chord breaks of the guitar and whispered percussion effects" as well as frequent glissandi.
The libretto by Monika Rothmaier is based on Gabriel García Márquez's short story The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother.
[2] In an interview, the composer reported that she had the idea for the material after she had purchased a volume of novellas by Márquez at a book table for relaxation during a Sunday stroll through Baden-Baden.
She had been searching in vain for months for suitable opera material and had just decided to give it up for the time being.
[3] The musical director of the premiere on 18 March 1992 in the Chamber Theatre of the Stuttgart State Opera was Bernhard Kontarsky.
The main roles were played by Alenka Genzel (Eréndira), Christina Ascher (Grandmother) and Hans-Georg Priese (Ulysses).
[9] The production was also shown as a guest performance at the 3rd day of the Neue Musiktheater in North Rhine-Westphalia in June 1993.
The main roles were sung by Alessandra Catterucci (Eréndira), Christina Ascher (Grandmother) and Josef Luftensteiner (Ulysses).
[13] The title role was sung by Anja Petersen, the Grandmother again by Christina Ascher and Ulysses by Paul Brady.