Crosby Theatre, Santa Fe Opera
Photo: Robert Godwin, courtesy of Santa Fe Opera
My review of four of Santa Fe Opera's 2023 productions is posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. There are a ton of prior reviews out there, none of which I read before finishing my review. I'm extremely curious how they all felt about the season, particularly, Nico Muhly's new orchestration of Monteverdi's Orfeo and Netia Jones's production and direction of Pelléas et Mélisande.
I liked Muhly's orchestration but didn't give it the weight that I suspect other reviewers did. It's a great, great opera that works with period or modern instruments, and this was a terrific production. I was half-sorry that Muhly didn't introduce some really weird instrumentation; his new orchestration is pretty tasteful.
I found the Pelléas production confusing and physically cluttered, both in terms of the set and the direction, unnecessarily complicated. I had mixed feelings about Netia Jones's touring Curlew River, but very much liked her direction of Philip Glass's Orphée in London in 2019. Stage clutter is a problem when you're working at Santa Fe: the stage is small and triangular; the house lacks a fly tower, so scenery cannot be lowered from above; most scenery is rolled in from the sides, but the wings aren't very big either. I've seen some productions that solve this issue very cleverly, including The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and this summer's Orfeo.
What I couldn't say in my review was that the LA Opera production I saw earlier this year was magnificent in just about every way: an excellent David McVicar production that really caught the mystery of the work, great singing all around, and magnificent conducting by James Conlon. The sheer beauty of the LA orchestra, the long, flowing, Wagnerian lines of the music (but in French): Conlon is always so good. LA also had Kyle Ketelsen as a seething, searing Golaud, a truly great performance that Zachary Nelson in Santa Fe didn't come close to. Nelson had the physical violence down, but I didn't get the same sense of barely-contained explosiveness that Ketelsen projected. I'll note that Efrain Solis was gripping in West Edge Opera's production a few years ago, in very much the same way.
Watch this space: I will link to other reviews and comment on them in the next few days.
- Alex Ross, blog post, New Yorker article. He also comments on the singer-friendliness of the opera house, which I attribute at least partially to the funneling effect of the triangular stage and designers' clever use of on-stage hard scenery, but perhaps most to the comparatively low roof and its reflective capabilities. Alex mentions that reconfiguring the orchestra for period instruments would be impractical, and boy howdy, that is correct. It would be logistically difficult and expensive to get a period band that appeared only in five performances plus however many weeks of rehearsals each opera gets. Alex did not, alas, see the marvelous Rusalka.
- Thomas May, Memeteria and various reviews on Musical America, which is paywalled; Orfeo review in Opera Now. He smartly, if obliquely, points out the visual pun of an opera by Monteverdi performed on a green hill.
- Michael Anthonio quite rightly raves about Rusalka at Parterre Box.
4 comments:
Netia Jones, not Nitia
Duly corrected now, thanks. I believe I have made this particular error before.
I agree that the Santa Fe Pelleas had a very cluttered set. The least understandable were three industrial sized fans behind the peculiar box that served as Melisande's death bed (among other things). I couldn't for the world figure out what they added to the set or story.
I personally thought the sets for the Rusalka were also bizarre. But Allyn Perez was sensational in the title role. The Tosca set was somewhat more conventional but Tosca chokes Scarpia rather than stab him (and he still managed to sing his final lines while being choked) and she shoots herself rather than jump off Castel Sant'Angelo.
I agree that Santa Fe has problems with staging due to its design but in Cosi Fan Tutte a few years ago it went to the opposite extreme, almost a bare stage and Ferrando and Gugliermo didn't even change costumes before re-appearing as Albanians. It can't find a happy medium (at least some of the time).
Oh, the fans, right! I should have mentioned them in my review.
I liked the Rusalka sets, and the program notes included comments from Pountney about what he was aiming for in the production. I thought they worked well. Aileen Perez was, as you say, sensational.
I would have had to extend my stay in one direction or another to see the Tosca, but I didn't feel any need to. I didn't look at the production photos and now I need to; I have professional doubts about choking as a way to kill Scarpia because most chokes are not difficult to break. (I practiced a particularly nasty martial art for many years...) I heard from another person that the production and singing weren't great, and my last SFO Tosca was...Ailyn Perez. :) I saw her twice, including the night that Solomon Howard proposed on stage!
Different directors and designers are more or less successful on the SFe stage. I liked David Alden's Jenufa in 2019 a lot; a striking design that worked well; in the past, King Roger, some of the Baroque operas I've seen, this year's Orfeo, and George Tsypin's design for Adriana mater worked reasonably well. Oh, and also Steve Jobs.
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