Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'La Fanciulla del West'

Ensemble in The Girl of the Golden West (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, R. Tebaldi, M. del Monaco, C. MacNeil, Orchestra of Accademia di Santa Cecilia, F. Capuana (Decca)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Puccini's La Fanciulla del West may not be a rarity in some parts of the world, but Santa Fe Opera had not produced this work since 1995 when it revived it for this year's 60th anniversary season. The company bet on the draw of Puccini's name, even though this opera is perhaps the composer's most unwieldy, and its regular Mozart to fill the house for ten performances each. By comparison Roméo et Juliette was given seven performances, and Capriccio and Vanessa, the latter arguably the best production of the season, just five each.

Other Reviews: John Stege, Pistol-Packin’ Minnie (Santa Fe Reporter, July 6) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe scene: A British stage director and a French conductor take on Puccini's Western opera (Dallas Morning News, August 3) Heidi Waleson, The 2016 Festival Season at the Santa Fe Opera (Wall Street Journal, August 9)

Emmanuel Villaume and the Santa Fe Opera orchestra turned in a compelling reading of this most accomplished score. It was not in the same class as Lorin Maazel's poised conducting of the work, the only other time it has come under review on this side of the Atlantic, at the Castleton Festival in 2013. Still, Villaume and especially the male chorus gave the work the nostalgic warmth needed to soften some of the less believable twists of the story.

If we do not find credible the homesickness of the miners in the first act, in their need to believe, as in the psalm taught to them by Minnie, in the possibility that every one of them can be saved by God, then their decision not to hang Dick Johnson at the end of the third act will seem doubly ridiculous. Probably, the opera likely would work better, would seem less silly, if it ended tragically. If Johnson got hanged and the boys shot their beloved Minnie as she tried to save him, the dying heroine would have found, as suffering women always do, her perfect complement in the music of Puccini.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Don Giovanni'

Leah Crocetto (Donna Anna) in Don Giovanni (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items
Washington Post, August 4

Mozart, Don Giovanni, J. Weisser, L. Regazzo, A. Pendatchanska, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2007)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
In Strauss's "Capriccio," heard last week at Santa Fe Opera, the Countess settles on Gluck as setting the highest standard for opera. If only Santa Fe Opera had heeded her advice and replaced its annual Mozart opera with one by Gluck, as I suggested to Charles MacKay a few years ago. Mozart may be a staple at Santa Fe Opera, but Mozart is rarely the highlight of any season here. For the last truly extraordinary Mozart production at Santa Fe Opera, you would have to go back to "Lucio Silla" in 2005. This year's "Don Giovanni," last heard here in 2009, had that same feeling of routine Santa Fe Opera Mozart, mostly pleasant but with some inevitable disappointment. A nice staging of Gluck's "Iphigénie en Aulide" would have been just the thing to lift the season into something extraordinary.

The piece came to life a bit more in the recitatives, when Glenn Lewis took over on the fortepiano, seated at the left corner of the pit so he could see and interact with the singers. The superlative recording led by René Jacobs showed how the fortepiano, played with improvisational fancy, can enliven the recitatives in this opera. Lewis was not quite on the level of that recording, but he worked in witty allusions to other arias, for example, when some characters were mentioned.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 60th Anniversary Season (Part 2 of 2)

Puccini, La Fanciulla del West, N. Stemme, J. Kaufmann, Wiener Staatsoper, F. Welser-Möst (Sony, 2016)

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 2: the 60th anniversary’s big-ticket items (Washington Post, August 4)

The big-ticket items on the 60th anniversary season at Santa Fe Opera are Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which got ten performances each. And Richard Jones’s new production of “Fanciulla” (heard on August 2) could make viewers agree with Puccini, who called this unwieldy work his favorite.

Periodic titters in the Crosby Theater confirmed that the absurdities of the libretto — like “Madame Butterfly,” based on a work by David Belasco — remain problematic. The title figure, Minnie, runs a saloon in a California Gold Rush town; rebuffs the attentions of the local sheriff, Jack Rance; and falls for a stranger calling himself Dick Johnson, who turns out to be the highway bandit everyone in town is hunting. Somehow the town’s residents decide not to hang Johnson, and Minnie runs off with him. Characters include “Red Indians” named Billy Jackrabbit and Wowkle, described as “his squaw.”

Patricia Racette had the vocal power and the dramatic presence to make Minnie almost believable...

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[Read Part 1]

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Vanessa'

Zach Borichevsky (Anatol) and Virginie Verrez (Erika) in Vanessa (Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Barber, Vanessa (rev. version), C. Brewer, S. Graham, W. Burden, BBC Symphony Orchestra, L. Slatkin (Chandos, 2004)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Librettist Gian-Carlo Menotti drew inspiration from the bleak spirit of Karen Blixen’s Seven Gothic Tales in this original story. Set in a manor house in an unnamed northern climate, very much like Rungstedlund, the manor house in rural Denmark where Blixen grew up, the tense, formal atmosphere has some possible resonance with details of Blixen's life. Blixen's father hanged himself when she was a child, after he had impregnated one of the maids, infuriating his severe mother-in-law. Although she was invited to the premiere of Vanessa, Blixen reportedly left partway through, claiming illness, but perhaps she saw her own life reflected too much in the story.

The air of Greek tragedy, not just the allusion to Oedipus Rex in the first act that possibly provides a clue to Erika's hidden identity as Vanessa's daughter, pervades the work, as Menotti described it in his note to the libretto: "This is the story of two women, Vanessa and Erika, caught in the central dilemma which faces every human being: whether to fight for one's ideals to the point of shutting oneself off from reality, or compromise with what life has to offer, even lying to oneself for the mere sake of living. Like a sullen Greek chorus, a third woman (the old Grandmother) condemns by her very silence the refusal first of Vanessa, then of Erika, to accept the bitter truth that life offers no solution except its own inherent struggle. When Vanessa, in her final eagerness to embrace life, realizes this truth, it is perhaps too late."

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Opera goes to the movies: SFO puts cinematic twist on ‘Vanessa’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 31) John Stege, Samuel Barber’s Wintry Tale (Santa Fe Reporter, August 2) James L. Paulk, Palette Of Love Is Noir, Blue & Gray At Santa Fe Opera (Classical Voice North America, August 3) Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera: Barber's 'Vanessa' makes for a magical night (Dallas Morning News, August 4) Terry Ponick, Santa Fe Opera's elegant, disturbing 'Vanessa' (Communities Digital News, August 14) George Loomis, Vanessa, Santa Fe Opera — review: ‘An engrossing production’ (Financial Times, August 15)

The Oedipal struggle features mother and daughter (Vanessa and Erika, disguised as aunt and niece) both drawn to the same man, at once father, husband, and brother. When Anatol asks Erika who she is, she replies, "Sometimes I am her niece but mostly her shadow." In Act III, Vanessa, terrified that Erika will be found dead, calls out, "I love you, Erika, I have always loved you as if you were my own child, my own daughter." When the Baroness realizes that Erika has lost Anatol's unborn child and is ruined, she stops talking to Erika, which seems to indicate that is why she had stopped speaking to Vanessa. There is no mention of Erika's parents at any point in the libretto.

Another mythological allusion passes by even faster, when Anatol calls Vanessa "my Vanessa, my Ariadne." Is Anatol Theseus, who will abandon Vanessa, or is he Dionysos, who has come to rescue her on Naxos? In that case Anatol's father would be Theseus, who abandoned her, and now Anatol the younger is Dionysos, who rescues her. Barber's use of leitmotifs, which pervade the work, is complex, something that Prof. Robert Larsen studied in some detail in his Master's thesis but did not publish as far as I can determine. The Pulitzer Prize awarded to Barber for this opera, in 1958, was well deserved indeed.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Roméo et Juliette'

Susan Vishmid (dancer), Emily Fons (Stéphano), and Beth Miller (dancer) in Roméo et Juliette
(Photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Gounod, Roméo et Juliette, A. Gheorghiu, R. Alagna, J. Van Dam, S. Keenlyside, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, M. Plasson (Warner, 2010)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
The first time that Santa Fe Opera ever staged a Gounod opera was Faust in 2011. The second Gounod opera they have done, not surprisingly, is this season's Roméo et Juliette, heard on July 29, and it will likely be the last as Gounod's other operas rarely see the light of day. Stephen Lawless also directed this new production, and he made as much of a muddle of it as he did with Faust.

The French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré hews quite closely to Shakespeare's play in most respects, and there are some beautiful pieces in the score. Ailyn Pérez's voice has grown admirably, with a broad and confident tone that filled the house up to B-flat and optional high C at the end of Je veux vivre, Juliette's big waltz showpiece. Only above that, in the couple places where the role ranges up to high D in Act I, did the sound turn a little acidic. Occasional shortcomings of intonation were still present, but also much improved. Tenor Stephen Costello was cast as Roméo, likely before the two singers divorced, but he fell ill the day of this performance. His cover, Joseph Guerrero, was called in the afternoon of the performance and saved the show. Guerrero, who is in the Los Angeles Opera young artist program and took second prize at the Operalia Competition in 2014, had a beautiful sound, the vibrato tightly coiled but most not in an unpleasant way.

Raymond Aceto, who was a solid Hunding in the Washington National Opera Ring Cycle, was even stronger here as Frère Laurent. Others made less auspicious company debuts, with Tim Mix showing some charming stage presence but some limitations in volume as Capulet, and the handsome face of Elliot Madore not quite matched with a handsome voice as Mercutio. Apprentices were featured further down the cast list, none to great distinction, but Peter Scott Drackley, whom some Washington listeners may know, had a nice turn as Benvolio.

Even after the debacle of Stephen Lawless's staging of Faust in 2011, the director was allowed to do a similar sort of updating of the story into the 19th century, when the opera was composed. For Faust it was a sort of freak-show circus background, and here it was the American Civil War. (Get it? Because the two families are bitterly opposed to each other.) The Capulets and Montagues wore blue and red Civil War uniforms, respectively, and the ladies were costumed in huge hoop skirts and bonnets (sets and costumes by Ashley Martin-Davis), although the director missed a golden opportunity to costume the exceptionally tall Soloman Howard's Duke as President Abraham Lincoln. The set backdrop in place for the entire opera was a curved mausoleum wall, with inscriptions on some of the panels, and the staging opened with the burial of the two lovers, casting the opera as a flashback (an idea somewhat undermined by having the chorus fling off their mourning black on stage as the Act I party scene began).

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Gounod’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’ at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 17) John Stege, Death-Mark’d Love on Opera Hill: SFO’s Shakespearean 'liebestod' (Santa Fe Reporter, July 20)

Actually, for a while the concept almost worked -- Frère Laurent doubles as a surgeon in an infirmary -- or at least did not make me angry until we reached the end of the third act. That is where Roméo's page, Stéfano, sings my favorite aria in the opera, and in this case where Stéfano appeared in the guise of what, I guess, was a cantinière, just with a ridiculous fake mustache. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Lawless turned this scene into some sort of drag cabaret act, complete with choreography (created by Nicola Bowie) involving two supernumerary dancers (pictured above). Lawless scores double for directorial perversity by inserting dancers into this scene and in Act I, while ignoring the Act IV ballet that here, as in almost every other production of this opera, was cut.

At the podium Harry Bicket led a capable performance from the orchestra, long on loud brass and featuring dizzying chromatic runs from the woodwinds in the Queen Mab aria and ardent, balanced sound in the divisi cello sections. The highest marks go to fight directors Rick Sordelet and Christian Kelly-Sordelet, who marshaled the cast, chorus, and a team of acrobats in some of the more impressive sword fights we have seen in an opera.

This production continues through August 25 at Santa Fe Opera.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: Further Thoughts on 'Capriccio'

Amanda Majeski (The Countess) in Capriccio (photo © Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course)
Washington Post, July 31

Strauss, Capriccio, E. Schwarzkopf, N. Gedda, D. Fischer-Dieskau, Philharmonia Orchestra, W. Sawallisch (EMI, 1957)

FURTHER THOUGHTS:
Santa Fe Opera gave the American premiere of Richard Strauss's Capriccio in 1958, not long after the 1942 world premiere in wartime Munich. It was last performed here in 1993, and the only time I have ever reviewed Capriccio was at the Opéra de Paris in 2004.

Capriccio is a meta-opera that is dizzyingly self-reflective. Set in the 18th century, two wealthy patrons, a Countess and Count who are sister and brother, invite a group of artists to their house outside Paris to discuss a work to be commissioned for the Countess's birthday. All the arts are represented -- a composer (Flamand), a poet (Olivier), an actress (Clairon), a theater director (La Roche), two Italian opera singers, a dancer, even a prompter -- vying for the attention of their patrons, one inclined more toward the popular arts (the Count) and one toward the higher ones (the Countess). In the end, the Countess decides that only an opera can feature all of the arts she loves equally, and the opera will tell the story of the very evening that has just played out.

Strauss himself understood the work's faults, telling his librettist, Clemens Krauss, as quoted by Michael Kennedy in his book Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma: "Never forget that our Capriccio is no piece for the broad public, any more than it should be played in a big house where only a third of the text can be understood. [It is] a dainty morsel for cultural gourmets, not very substantial musically -- at all events, not so succulent that the music will compensate for it if the general public does not take a liking to the libretto ... I have no faith in its theatrical effectiveness in the usual sense." Little surprise, then, that the house on July 27 had the greatest number of empty seats I can remember seeing in Santa Fe.

Strauss stacks the argument between music and words for supremacy in opera in his own favor, creating the most beautiful music for Flamand when he sets Olivier's sonnet to music, far surpassing the effect previously when the same poem is read aloud and unaccompanied. Along with Galeano Salas, the other Italian singer, also good, was Shelly Jackson from Manassas, Virginia, a former apprentice who in 2014 stepped into the role of Norina in Don Pasquale when the scheduled singer had to withdraw. Amanda Majeski did not impress in her debut in the truly awful staging of Vivaldi's Griselda by Peter Sellars in 2011, and she was not up to the demands of the Countess here either, brittle at the top and too easily covered by the orchestra to be effective. She will sing the role of the Countess in Washington National Opera's Le Nozze di Figaro this fall, and her Count at the Kennedy Center will be Joshua Hopkins, who made the same capable impression here as Olivier as he did as Papageno in a Santa Fe Magic Flute a decade ago. Majeski's Count in this Capriccio, Craig Verm, a former SFO apprentice, had a competent debut, but nothing remarkable.

Other Reviews: James M. Keller, Capriccio charms at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 24) John Stege, Ultimate Strauss: SFO’s Golden Hour (Santa Fe Reporter, July 27)

This beautiful score features Strauss at his most chameleon-like, quoting from a broad range of composers, including himself, a vivid reminder that he is, as scholar Michael Kennedy put it, "music's incomparable jester-poet." Leo Hussain's conducting did little to help this bit of elegant repartee shine, and the pit often sounded a little at odds with each other in the countless starts, shifts, and stops of the work. The overall musical cohesion was at its best in the two octets that show the ultimate power of opera, with eight different character perspectives jumbled together simultaneously. Some of Hussein's gestures seemed needlessly combative toward the musicians, as he repeatedly called for a louder sound from one of the musicians in the slender baroqueux accompaniment to the dance pieces, for example, or menacingly jabbed his finger at one of the Italian singers throughout their duet. The decision to take the intermission sheepishly added by Strauss was a mistake, as it comes at a drama-sapping point, just after the Countess has asked the Major-Domo to serve chocolate.

For the famous string sextet that opens the work, the six musicians were seated on stage, contrary to the composer's score indication, in a neo-Rococo chamber music salon in the midst of the Countess's more obviously modern home (sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel), which helped project their (not always ideal) sound. Director Tim Albery, whose stagings can be hit or miss, did little to make the work jump off the page. The period is updated to roughly the time of the opera's premiere, but without any reference to the horrors that Strauss was trying to forget by writing this escapist work. (Really, if there were any time for gratuitously adding Nazis to an opera, this would be it.) The mise en abyme suggested by the chamber music salon, where the Countess has her gorgeous final scene as night falls — the escapism of opera in general, and of this opera in particular — was not enough to lift the work above its surface wit. In that glorious final scene, Albery has the Countess see her reflection not in a mirror, as Strauss wanted, but in the French doors at the back of the salon, an alteration abetted by the supertitles, which avoid any translation of the word "mirror" heard from the singers. It may seem an insignificant change, but without it much of the work's meaning likely sails over the head of viewers unfamiliar with the libretto.

This production runs through August 19, at Santa Fe Opera.

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 60th Anniversary Season (Part 1 of 2)

Barber, Vanessa (orig. version), E. Steber, N. Gedda, R. Elias, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, D. Mitropoulos (Sony)

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera, part 1: Celebrating 60 with two rarities and Strauss (of course) (Washington Post, July 31)

Some companies celebrate anniversaries with a world premiere; but the Santa Fe Opera, which has staged its share of them over the years, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer with three rarely-performed 20th-century masterpieces, instead. Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa,” heard for the first time in the company’s history, crowned the season in its opening performance on Saturday evening.

In Gian Carlo Menotti’s taut libretto, set in a manor house in rural Denmark, Vanessa has been waiting for over twenty years for her lost love, Anatol, with her silently hostile mother and her niece Erika. At the start of the opera, an Anatol arrives who turns out to be the lost lover’s son, and he sets about seducing both aunt and niece. When Vanessa asks Erika to read to her in the first scene, Erika chooses Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex,” lines spoken by Oedipus just at the moment when he is revealed on stage having struck out his own eyes. You can guess that the story will not end well.

Soprano Erin Wall had shattering power in the title role, her voice revealing all of Vanessa’s pent-up frustration, but with a striking high pianissimo also in her arsenal...

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'Salome' / 'La Finta Giardiniera': My Heart Belongs to Daddy

Charles T. Downey, Powerful “Salome” and problematic Mozart at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 8

Mozart, La Finta Giardiniera, S. Karthäuser, A. Penda, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2012)

Why do people laugh so much in performances of Richard Strauss’s Salome? If anything the amount of tittering increased in the performance of the company’s new production heard on Thursday night. There are comic moments in the libretto, to be sure, but too many people laugh in the wrong places at parts of the opera that are, or should be, the most disturbing.

English director Daniel Slater’s powerful staging, updated to the turn of the 20th century and based on the sexual identity theories and dream interpretation of Sigmund Freud, eventually silenced most of the laughter...

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SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, Santa Fe Opera Offers ‘The Daughter of the Regiment,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘Salome’ (New York Times, August 7)

John Stege, Salome Agonistes (Santa Fe Reporter, July 22)

James M. Keller, Salome — hell hath no fury (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 19)

Steve Jobs Opera for Santa Fe

Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe company commissions an iOpera: Should there be an app for that?
The Classical Review, August 7

Santa Fe Opera celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2016, when the season will focus on three great operas of the 20th century: Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, Strauss’s Capriccio, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa.

Although next summer will not feature a world premiere, the company announced Wednesday that American composer Mason Bates will create a new opera in Santa Fe, in collaboration with librettist Mark Campbell for the 2017 season...

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Cold Mountain'

Ensemble in Cold Mountain, 2015, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)

C. Frazier, Cold Mountain (Grove Press, 1997)

Charles T. Downey, “Cold Mountain” is a long, bleak night in Santa Fe Opera premiere (The Classical Review, August 6)

Few moments equal the excitement of the world premiere of a new opera. The theater darkens, and music that very few people have heard before unfolds before you.

This crucial tradition continued at Santa Fe Opera this year with the world premiere of Cold Mountain, the first opera by American composer Jennifer Higdon...

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SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, ‘Cold Mountain,’ at Santa Fe Opera, Recounts a Separated Lover’s Arduous Journey (New York Times, August 6)

Jeffrey Brown, Civil War tragedy ‘Cold Mountain’ inspires opera (PBS NewsHour, August 5)

George Loomis, Cold Mountain, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe, New Mexico — review (Financial Times, August 5)

Paul Ingles, 'Cold Mountain' Takes Civil War Odyssey To The Opera Stage (NPR, August 5)

Thomas May, Cold Mountain Almost Reaches the Top (Musical America, August 5)

Gregory Sullivan Isaacs, Miguel Harth-Bedoya brings Jennifer Higdon’s music to life in ‘Cold Mountain’ (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 5)

John Stege, A Magic Mountain (Santa Fe Reporter, August 5)

Ray Mark Rinaldi, Santa Fe Opera ascends with Jennifer Higdon's "Cold Mountain" (Denver Post, August 4)

Rodney Punt, Jennifer Higdon’s ‘Cold Mountain’ Has World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera

David Patrick Stearns, Higdon's 'Cold Mountain' premieres in Santa Fe (Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3)

James M. Keller, ‘Cold Mountain’ opera review: Long-lost love among the ruins (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 2)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Daughter of the Regiment' / 'Rigoletto'

Bruce Sledge (Duke of Mantua) and chorus in Rigoletto, Santa Fe Opea (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, A sensational “Rigoletto” debut and uneven “La fille” at Santa Fe Opera (The Classical Review, August 5)

For one of its standard repertoire pieces this season, Santa Fe Opera has returned to Verdi’s Rigoletto for the first time since 2000, heard on Tuesday night. With a libretto drawn from Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse, Verdi manages to make the two male lead characters, the title jester and the Duke of Mantua sympathetic, even when they are largely repulsive...

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SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, Santa Fe Opera Offers ‘The Daughter of the Regiment,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘Salome’ (New York Times, August 7)

Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe’s ‘Rigoletto’ a feast for the ears, but not the eyes (Dallas Morning News, August 5)

John Stege, Napoleonic Tomfoolery: Getting regimented at the Opera (Santa Fe Reporter, July 8)

---, Voices, Voices, Voices: This Rigoletto’s a contender (Santa Fe Reporter, July 15)

James M. Keller, Season opens with Donizetti's ‘Daughter of the Regiment’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 4)

---, A dark and stormy night at SFO’s Rigoletto (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 5)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Dr. Sun Yat-sen'

Joseph Dennis and Corinne Winters in Dr. Sun Yat-sen, 2014 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s leaden “Dr. Sun Yat-sen” leaves one hungry for more musical substance (The Classical Review, August 9)

When Santa Fe Opera decided to pull the plug on the world premiere of Judith Weir’s new opera Miss Fortune this year, the company settled instead on an American premiere. For the final production of the season, it has presented Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the first opera by Huang Ruo, a little-known China-born American composer. The results...

Huang Ruo, Dr. Sun Yat-sen
Santa Fe Opera

See Also:
Nick Frisch, Opera Ends; Some Cite Censorship (New York Times, October 11, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, 'An American Soldier' Gets Its Premiere (Ionarts, June 14, 2014)

Lindsley Cameron Miyoshi, An Epic Life Sings (Opera News, June 2014)

James M. Keller, East meets West in ‘Dr. Sun Yat-sen’ (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 27)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A Revolutionary Who Cannot Be Silenced (New York Times, July 28)

Scott Cantrell, ‘Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’ dramatic, but not entirely convincing (Dallas Morning News, July 31)

Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Anne Midgette, Santa Fe Opera’s sustained high note (Washington Post, August 8)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'The Impresario' / 'Le rossignol'

Erin Morley (Nightingale), Anthony Michaels-Moore (Emperor of China),
and cast in Le Rossignol, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Stravinsky and Mozart make colorful music together in Santa Fe Opera double bill
The Classical Review, August 8

Santa Fe Opera had a special connection to Igor Stravinsky in the last fifteen years of his life. So it was fitting that the company revived the composer’s Le Rossignol this season, especially since Stravinsky himself once conducted it in Santa Fe. The company’s first production of this unusual opera-ballet in over forty years...

Stravinsky, Le rossignol / Renard, N. Dessay, Orchestre et Choeurs de l'Opéra National de Paris, J. Conlon

Stravinsky, Le Rossignol
Mozart, The Impresario
Santa Fe Opera

See Also:
Natalie Dessay's 'Le Rossignol' (2005), truly bizarre film directed by Christian Chaudet (YouTube)

Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale (1844)

The interpolated music in The Impresario includes one of my favorite minor Mozart works, the four-part scatological canon Bona nox, K. 561, whose final lines should not be reproduced in a family publication

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Scott Cantrell, A befuddling Mozart-Stravinsky double bill in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

Ray Mark Rinaldi, Santa Fe Opera upsets Mozart, and Chinese history, to keep things fresh (Denver Post, July 30)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Carmen'

Chorus in Act IV, Carmen, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, The personal is political in Santa Fe’s incendiary border-crisis “Carmen”
The Classical Review, August 7

Santa Fe Opera’s new production of Carmen is the third staging I have seen this year alone. An opera that is mounted this often invariably receives a lot of mediocre performances, but when a director does something new with his staging, and when there is a major vocal discovery to be made...

Previously:
Last Carmen at Santa Fe Opera (2006)

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, A Film-Noirish Carmen, Down Mexico Way (New York Times, July 30)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Don Pasquale' and 'Fidelio'

Prisoners' Chorus in Fidelio, 2014, Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Updated Donizetti and Beethoven offer mixed results at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 6

It is an odd summer at the Santa Fe Opera, considering the festival’s repertorial specialties. The season offers only a sliver of Mozart, no Strauss, and no early opera — and this in the first season of historically informed performance specialist Harry Bicket’s tenure as music director...

Previously:
Brenda Rae in La Traviata last year

Alek Schrader sang Ernesto last summer at Glyndebourne

Zachary Nelson in last year's Figaro

Don Pasquale at Washington Opera (2011)

Other Reviews:
Heidi Waleson, Santa Fe's Modern Makeovers (Wall Street Journal, August 5)

John Stege, Absurdly Entertaining (Santa Fe Reporter, July 8)

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Holocaust Grafted to Beethoven (New York Times, August 4)

Scott Cantrell, Santa Fe Opera Nazifies ‘Fidelio’ (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

John Stege, Heil Dir, Ludwig! (Santa Fe Reporter, July 14)

James M. Keller, ‘Fidelio’ under the Führer: SFO presents Beethoven’s only opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 13)

Christine Brewer, the Last Rose of Summer

Wagner, Wesendonck-Lieder / Britten, Cabaret Songs, C. Brewer, R. Vignoles (live at Wigmore Hall) [MP3]

At the end of my week at Santa Fe Opera was the first of a series of song recitals, presented by the company at the Lensic Center in downtown Santa Fe. Heard on Sunday afternoon, this concert featured soprano Christine Brewer, who was marking the birth anniversaries of Richard Wagner (200) and Benjamin Britten (100). She did this with a program that was close to the first Brewer recital reviewed at Ionarts, in 2005 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This time around, her accompanist was Joseph Illick, Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Concert Association and Music Director of Fort Worth Opera.

Representing Wagner were the Wesendonck-Lieder, inspired by and dedicated to Mathilde Wesendonck, the infatuation that put an end to Wagner's first marriage. Brewer gave the first song a luscious legato smoothness, able to open up the powerful side of her voice to fill the hall quite amply without overpowering the listener. There was at times a raspy burr at the top, minimal but there, but when the explosions of the second and fourth songs are, well, that explosive, it thrills the ear. The third song, Im Treibhaus, with its mysterious, rocking motif in the piano, was enigmatic and heated, the German diction clear and simple, as if recited poetry. Illick supported his partner ably at the piano, with transparency and solidity as needed. He rounded out the Wagner half with two of Liszt's arrangements of Wagner opera excerpts, introducing them with charming and insightful explanations. Some of the more virtuosic passages of the "Spinning Song" from The Flying Dutchman stretched Illick's technique just a bit, but the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde was sensitively rendered. As soon as he played it, however, one regretted that Brewer had not programmed the actual "Liebestod."

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Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Figaro' Redux

(L to R) Keith Jameson (Basilio), Susanne Mentzer (Marcellina), Dale Travis (Bartolo), Daniel Okulitch (Count), Zachary Nelson (Figaro), Lisette Oropesa (Susanna), Susanna Phillips (Countess) in Le Nozze di Figaro, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)

The final opera of the season at Santa Fe Opera had to be Mozart, and it had to be the Mozart opera most produced here, Le Nozze di Figaro. Of course, it would be no surprise for me at this point to make some lament about chestnuts -- the most striking production of Mozart I ever witnessed here was Lucio Silla, inventively staged by Jonathan Kent in 2005 -- but I will not. The overwhelming feeling I had listening to Figaro for the umpteenth time -- and perhaps this was wrapped up in nostalgia for my final night in Crosby Theater this summer, on Saturday, watching the lightning strike the desert far away -- was just how lucky we were to be the recipients of such a towering work of art, by Mozart and Da Ponte at perhaps their most ingenious. As long as the staging and casting are decent, and they were very good here, the opera can work its ineluctable magic.

This was a revival of the 2008 production by Jonathan Kent, with sets and costumes by Paul Brown, which has been overseen this time by local director Bruce Donnell. The only singer returning from the 2008 cast was the Countess of soprano Susanna Phillips, who got the big ovations due to singers who sang here as apprentices, and she earned them. The voice has opened up beautifully in the last five years, and she more than filled the house while also keeping control over that suave pianissimo for the repeat of "Dove sono." Her understanding of the role of the Countess has also blossomed, and she seemed to inhabit the character in a more mature and profound way, investing "Porgi, amor" with sadness, through the musicality of each slowly turned phrase, and the recitative leading to "Dove sono" with the bitterness of a neglected wife.

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Ionarts at Santa Fe: The Lady without a Lake

Joyce DiDonato (Elena) in La Donna del Lago, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Santa Fe Opera’s thrilling “Donna del Lago” proves the highlight of the summer
The Classical Review, August 2

It had to happen eventually, and it did.

After some disappointments earlier in the week, Thursday was a very good night to be at the Santa Fe Opera. The company’s debut production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago turned out to be the high point of this summer’s season. In a charming, rustic production, directed by Paul Curran and shared with the Metropolitan Opera, a top-notch cast blew the roof off Crosby Theater with performances that were vocally and musically thrilling and dramatically compelling. The magnificent purple-hued vista of a stormy night in the New Mexico desert, complete with lightning flashes, is the sort of thing that only Santa Fe can offer.

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Rossini, La Donna del Lago (critical edition of the score edited by H. Colin Slim)
Libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, premiered 24 October 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples
Based on Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Scott Cantrell, Vocal virtuosity in Santa Fe “La donna del lago” (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, La donna del lago, Santa Fe, New Mexico – review (Financial Times, August 1)

James M. Keller, Joyce DiDonato dazzles in La donna del lago (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 14)

Ionarts in Santa Fe: 'Oscar'

David Daniels (Oscar Wilde, center) and cast in Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Morrison’s “Oscar” premiere proves a trial at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 1

One of the best things about coming to the Santa Fe Opera each summer is the chance to hear new or at least recent operas. The company has a decorated history of world and U.S. premieres, an admirable devotion to contemporary composition to which it has stuck through thick and thin. This year’s season was anchored on the world premiere of Oscar, heard Wednesday night, the first opera by American composer Theodore Morrison and the result of a co-commision with Opera Philadelphia, which will mount it in 2015.

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Theodore Morrison, Oscar
With David Daniels, Heidi Stober, William Burden
Santa Fe Opera

SEE ALSO:
Ray Mark Rinaldi, First openly gay opera a fitting tribute to Oscar Wilde (Denver Post, July 15)

James M. Keller, 'Oscar' unveiled at Santa Fe Opera (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 28)

John Stege, Oscar’s Fatal Attraction: A messy night at the Opera (Santa Fe Reporter, July 30)

[Batty Masetto], Walk on the Wilde Side (Parterre.com, July 31)

Philip Campbell, Operatic Oscar (Albuquerque Journal, August 1)

James R. Oestreich, When a Poet’s Life and the Law Are at Odds (New York Times, August 2)

Scott Cantrell, A strong, if imperfect, new Oscar Wilde opera in Santa Fe (Dallas Morning News, August 2)

George Loomis, Oscar, Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico (Financial Times, August 4)

Ionarts at Santa Fe: 'La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein'

Kevin Burdette (General Boum, center) and cast in La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, Santa Fe Opera, 2013 (photo by Ken Howard)
Charles T. Downey, Fizz is off the champagne in Santa Fe Opera’s “Duchess of Gerolstein” (The Classical Review, July 31)

Listening to three hours of an Offenbach operetta will likely cause a hangover, not unlike the one caused by all the champagne that is guzzled by the operetta’s characters. This was the lesson learned at the Santa Fe Opera’s new production of Offenbach’s La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, heard Tuesday night.

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Offenbach, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein
Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
With Susan Graham, Emmanuel Villaume
Santa Fe Opera

Offenbach, La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, F. Lott, S. Piau, Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, M. Minkowski (production directed by Laurent Pelly) [CD]

[DVD]

SEE ALSO:
Mike Silverman, Actress makes royal return home at the Santa Fe Opera (Associated Press, July 27)

Scott Cantrell, A hyperactive Santa Fe ‘Grand Duchess of Gerolstein’ (Dallas Morning News, July 31)