Seen in Santa Fe

Michael Mayes (David) and Greer Grimsley (Paul) in The Righteous.

Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.

I made my more or less annual vist to Santa Fe Opera in August, seeing four of this year's five operas. (I passed on La Traviata.) My Letter from Santa Fe is posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. If you want to compare notes with my thoughts, Der Rosenkavalier and Elixir of Love are still streaming and can be heard at KFHM. This post is both a media roundup and further commentary; I couldn't fit a few things in. Apologies for not getting this post up before The Righteous and Don Giovanni came down.

The big event was, presumably, the world premiere of Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith's The Righteous. I was not very happy with the opera, which sags a lot. It is overly long, overstuffed, awkward, and generally unsuccessful.

• Zachary Woolfe, NY Times, makes many of the same points I do but is gentler about making them. I'll note that the text "Life is long and wisdom slow" appears long before David's exit aria. I'm surprised he doesn't mention the Biblical basis of the story.
• Heidi Waleson, WSJ
• Thomas May, Memeteria (but the review is at Musical America and paywalled)
• James Sohre, Opera Today
• Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News
• Mark Tiarks, Santa Fe New Mexican
• Julia Goldberg, Santa Fe Reporter
• OperaGene

Related:

• Interview with the composer at Operawire
• The Genesis of The Righteous, Santa Fe New Mexican

Don Giovanni and his ego: a wall covered with portraits of the character, with another on its way.

Ryan Speedo Green (Don Giovanni), photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.

For a long time, I really was not fond of Don Giovanni, ranking it far under The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte, the other two Mozart-da Ponte operas. The libretto is far messier, the time frame of the action less clear. It's got a tenor role that is difficult to make persuasive, because of the two arias and the tendency to cast a light lyric tenor in the role even when the Donna Anna is, say, Jane Eaglen.

I saw two productions of Don Giovanni in less than a week, and realized that the reason I had trouble with it was crappy productions at San Francisco Opera. The production they saddled Marc Minkowski with was awful, and unfortunately the recent new production by Michael Cavanagh has good moments but he did not really follow through whole-heartedly with his dystopian future idea. So I hadn't seen a really persuasive production since the David McVicar (!) in 2007.

The two I saw recently persuaded me of the opera's greatness, though I am not not not willing to go as far as to say "greatest opera ever written." If I had to choose a Mozart opera as a candidate for that spot, no question, Marriage of Figaro. 

But here's a surprise: the Merola Opera production, which I reviewed for SFCV, outshone Santa Fe Opera's, for two reasons: they had a better and more convincing Don Ottavio and Patricia Racette's direction was excellent with no major errors. 

I cannot say the same for Stephen Barlow's production in Santa Fe. His direction was mostly good and the physical production looked great, but oh dear, he really screwed up the end of the opera. The details are in my review, though here's a picture that explains the problem:

Ryan Speedo Green and Rachael Wilson

Photo by Curtis Brown for Santa Fe Opera

You might be forgiven if you think you've stumbled into a production of Tosca. I go into some detail about why this is such an awful mistake in the review, but I must mention that my notes say "...he's sprawled on the floor like Scarpia OH SHIT." I mean....why didn't someone tell Barlow that a mashup of Tosca and Don Giovanni was a bad idea? A friend has noted that perhaps it was an inside-opera joke, but I am dubious.

No photos of Elisir, but it was a charming delight. And the Rosenkavalier performance I saw was lovely, with Rachel Willis-Sørensen in gloriously beautiful voice as the Marschallin.