Days 105 thru 110 - Sunday thru Friday - Six Nights at the Opera
The Santa Fe Opera is located 7 miles north of the city in a
stunning mountain range. From the road
it looks like a futuristic site, with prominent white girders in the roof
dominating the view. But as you drive up
the long access road and into the expansive 3 level parking lot, you realize
that's just the facade. The theater
itself, named for John Crosby who founded the Opera in 1957, is a large outdoor
amphitheater. The stage and audience
areas are covered, and on one side of the auditorium a series of large baffles is
designed to keep rain and wind out. They
don't keep everything out, although the location of our regular seats in the
balcony does keep us dry!
The back of the stage can be opened up, affording
spectacular views of the hills, and sunsets.
Directors often take advantage of this to create stunning sets. Each seat has its own small screen where
translations of the opera help you follow along - in English or Spanish (even when
the opera is sung in English!)
Although to some, opera audiences are "stuffy", Santa
Fe is exactly the opposite. You can (and most people, including us do)
dress up although I've never seen a tux yet, and they also welcome people
dressed casually. A "Night at the
Opera" in Santa Fe can start
with a catered meal - anything from a snack box to a sit down dinner - or, as we
often choose, a tailgate picnic. We
visit a gourmet cheese shop and a fine foods store and bring a table and chairs
to set up in the parking lot. There we
enjoy bread and cheese (and sometimes pate) with (non alcoholic) wine and
salad.....if the weather holds! We've
seen people with much more elaborate spreads but for us simple gourmet foods
are fine!
Every night before a main stage production there is a talk
about the show you're about to see.
These are usually given by Oliver Prezant, director of the Santa Fe
Community Orchestra and a professor of music.
Oliver has an engaging presentation style, always having his audience
join in singing music from the opera as seasoning for his often hilarious
stories of the opera and its background.
One Wednesday evening he began by pointing out that the opera we were
about to see was the third in a row that flopped at its premiere - so why were
we paying money to see it?
The operas are a mix of classical favorites, new works and
rarely performed operas - a format adopted by Crosby
from the beginning and still followed today.
They can, and do attract the top echelon of international opera singers
- regulars at the New York Metropolitan Opera, La Scala Milan, Covent Garden
London, Theatro Colon Buenos Aires and other top venues - as well as the cream
of directors, conductors and designers.
This, then, is why we come to Santa Fe
each August. I'll fill you in on how we spend
our days, but every evening we're at the Opera House. Sunday, after a very quiet day, is a special
event. Since its beginning the Opera has
offered apprenticeships to talented young performers (and more recently
technicians). These apprentices perform
small roles or chorus positions in the main stage season. But on two Sundays they take center stage,
performing fully staged scenes from operaa of their choice, directed by
professionals. This Sunday we thrill to
a scene from L'Elisir d'Amore, Donizetti's comic masterpiece, witness a stunning performance by a soprano
in the "trouser role" of Sextus, son of Pompey, in an excerpt from
Guilio Cesare by Handel, and hear two arias and a chorus number from
Bernstein's little known "Trouble in Tahiti",
plus 5 other scenes. The standard is uniformly excellent and we
know we'll be seeing these young singers in leading roles in years to come.
Monday we perform what has become a pilgrimage visiting some
of our favorite shops in downtown Santa Fe,
including a tasty lunch at La Boca, a Tapas restaurant. After returning to serve dinner to Quill and
Cosette we dress up and head north to see Puccini's Madama Butterfly. For the one person reading this who's never
heard of the opera, I say Google it! The
rest of you know the story, so I'll just say this was a visually and audibly
stunning production. The director
elicited gasps from the audience with just a small touch in the ending - I won't
spoil it in case the production gets another lease on life. But I will say that the ending opened up a
whole new vista on what could happen after the events of the opera!
Tuesday Vicky have a business meeting and lunch with
Michelle so I spend most of the day with the cats helping me prepare my H&R
Block classes. I do however, deliver
Vicky to Michelle's office and pick her up.
I could have let her take the car but then I wouldn't get to spend time
with Gracie, Michelle's beautiful snow white pet wolf. Gracie is afraid of strangers and although
she does warm to us, especially after we offer her treats, it's always fun to
re-develop the trust with her. When I
return to the cats I get sniffed - "What have you been doing petting a
canine?"
This evening it's Bernstein's operatic version of Voltaire's
"Candide" - a story that generates much conversation between Vicky
and me afterwards. Candide, a bastard,
lives with a count and countess and their two "beautiful and they know
it" children, Maximilian and Cunegonde (a girl). Candide and Cunegonde sing about being
married - he wants a quiet life with a small house and a garden, while she
wants luxury. shades of "Green
Acres" or the Annie Oakley/Frank Butler romance in "Annie Get Your
Gun!"
Candide and Cunegonde do end up living his dream, but not before
almost 3 hours of improbably events on 3 continents, involving people dying and
coming back to life several times! On
the surface it's very funny and I found myself felling sorry for Candide
although, as Vicky points out, he kills 3 people including his future brother in law! As always, great singing and acting!
On Wednesday we both spend the morning catching up on
chores, and as Vicky has more work to do after lunch U go into town alone and
after walking around, indulge in a Spicy Aztec ice cream, which I'll leave to
your imagination. Tonight we have dinner
at home before the opera - Ariadne aux Naxos
by Richard Strauss. Oliver informs us
that Strauss and his librettist couldn't agree on the format of the opera -
this after a 6 hour premiere that also included a performance of Moliere's
"Le Bourgois Gentilhomme"!
The result is a first act in which we meet an opera troupe
with prima donna and tenor full of themselves as well as a comedy troupe. Both groups have been hired to perform for
the dinner guests of "the richest man in Venice",
much to the annoyance of the opera troupe, especially the composer. Things get worse for the actors and singers
and funnier for the audience when the troupes are informed that, due to lack of
time, they must perform at the same time!
The second act is the "Opera" with Ariadne bemoaning
the loss of her lover Theseus (who walked out on her) and awaiting Hermes who
will take her to her death, while the comedy troupe tries to cheer her up. It was well staged and I enjoyed it, although
for me the second act had too much bemoaning and too little comedy!
Thursday Vicky had a meeting with Michelle and their client
so I stayed home and did some laundry.
Our opera tonight, "Dr. Atomic" by John Adams and Peter
Sellars *who also directed) is the story of the creation of the atom bomb at
Los Alomos. The pre-show talk is led by
Sellars and features 3 individuals who worked at the Los Alamos National
Lab. They give us a lot to think about,
discussing the ethical concerns that may or may not have occupied the minds of
the protagonists, and putting the
nuclear age into its present context.
Sellars reminds us of the "Doomsday Clock", a measure of how
close we are to nuclear annihilation. I
knew it started in 1945 at 7 minutes to midnight
and has been reset many times since.
What I didn't know is that, as of February this year, it's at 2 minutes
to midnight - the closest it's ever
been!
The opera itself - all 3 hours 15 minutes of it - tells the
story but also examines the thoughts of Oppenheimer, his wife and her Indian
maid. The libretto includes a poem by
John Donne, and excepts from the Hindu scriptures. "The Gadget", the prototype bomb,
looms over the stage for the whole opera, and it does explode (musically!) at
the end.
Vicky and I have totally different reactions to the show,
although we both agree that, as was once said of Mozart, there are "too
many notes!". For Vicky it brings
back memories of a childhood spent outside New York City
during the Cold War, where bomb drills and radio warnings were a part of
growing up. For me, growing up in
northern England,
the danger was much more remote and I take a more dispassionate approach,
analyzing the directorial decisions. But
we do agree it was worth seeing!
Friday is a day for relaxation. we drive up to the spa at Ojo Caliente, enjoy
their green chile cheeseburger with a side of "truffle fries" - which
are cooked in truffle oil and sprinkled with grated cheese - to dies for! We then head straight to the hot pools - no
sulphur smell here but 9 pools, each with different mineral content and with
temperatures ranging from 89 to 103 degrees (F). I try them all, including the mud pool. There you paint yourself with mud, sit in the
sun to back it on and then sit in a pool of muddy water before showering it
off.. I know it sounds weird but it's
very relaxing - don't knock it if you haven't tried it! Vicky gives that one a miss.
Our day at the spa is always eagerly anticipated and we end
up totally chilled out, and head back for the last opera. Rossini's "The Italian Girl in Algiers"
was written in 4 weeks while he was still young. The music, in "Bel canto" style,
emphasizes beautiful voices. As Oliver
puts it in his talk, "Forget the plot, enjoy the singing!". I won't forget the plot. It concerns Isabelle, an Italian woman who is
searching for her lost lover Lindoro. In
the original story she's shipwrecked off the coast of Algeria
and captured by pirates in the service of the local ruler, Mustafa. She's accompanied by an older man who wants
to be her lover. In this version she's
piloting her own plane when she lands in Algeria
and is captured. They set it up
brilliantly by having the plane cross the stage several times before it
landed. Isabella is taken to Mustafa who
falls in love with her and wants her for his harem.
Lindoro, meanwhile is Mustafa's slave. Mustafa has tired of his wife Elvira and
offers to free Lindoro if he will take her to Italy. So when the lovers Isabella and Lindoro see
each other, each is with a person of the opposite sex. Things get more complicated form there on,
but it all ends up happily. The music
and dialog is just plain fun, and the opera is, for me, probably the most
enjoyable of the phone week - if not the deepest!
So that's our week in Santa Fe
for this year but we're already planning to return next year. tomorrow we leave to cross 3 States, heading
for the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah,
another annual pilgrimage.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment