Die Walküre, Santa Fe Opera

Soloman Howard (Hunding), Vida Miknevičiūtė (Sieglinde), and Jamez McCorkle (Siegmund) in Die Walküre

Curtis Brown for Santa Fe Opera

 

I was very happy with the singing and staging and very unhappy with the conducting in Santa Fe's Die Walküre. As I said to a friend, it's the third time this year that James Gaffigan has disappointed me! I'm told that his Tristan three years ago –– I didn't go to Santa Fe that year –– was good, so who knows what was up with Die Walküre. But it was astonishingly dull conducting of an exciting opera that gives the conductor lots of opportunities.

Let me also note that it occurred to me more than once that the excellent Santa Fe Opera Orchestra doesn't have a long tradition of playing Wagner, and in some hard-to-define way, it showed. The phrasing and articulation weren't quite idiomatic at times (the weak conducting didn't, of course, help.) The San Francisco Opera Orchestra has some players who've been in nearly every Wagner performance in the last 45 years, meaning five full Ring cycles, individual performances of some of the Ring operas, and numerous performances of Lohengrin, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, Parsifal, and so on.

Meanwhile, next May, the L.A. Phil is performing Die Walküre sort of in concert (Frank Gehry is designing the sets), with a similar cast and a more exciting conductor. I mean...I haven't loved everything I've heard from Dudamel but I'd be surprised if he is dull. The singers for the May performances are:

• Siegmund: Jamez McCorkle (pronounced Ja-MEZ, not James)
• Sieglinde: Jessica Faselt (change....one...letter...)
• Hunding: Soloman Howard
• Wotan: Ryan Speedo Green
• Brünnhilde: Christine Goerke
• Fricka: Sarah Saturnino

Note that the two performances are each spread out over three nights, one act per evening, so this is...an unusually expensive ticket.

Santa Fe press round-up:

• Lisa Hirsch, Parterre Box
• Opera Tattler
• Thomas May, Opera Now (I have an Opera Now sign-in but the site isn't letting me read this reivew)
• Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News
• William Burnett, Opera Warhorses
• Kate Wagner, VAN
• Harlow Robinson, SFCV

Rigoletto, Santa Fe Opera

 

Duke Kim (Duke of Mantua) and Kayla Nanto (Countess Ceprano)

Rigoletto, Santa Fe Opera

Curtis Brown for Santa Fe Opera

In my review, I said that Duke Kim was made up such that he looked like a cross between Prince and Raul Julia as Gomez Addams. If you don't believe me, web search is your friend. Last year, Greer Grimsley, in The Righteous, looked like a cross between Barry Sonnenfeld, director of The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Maybe these pop culture references are a thing at Santa Fe.

• Lisa Hirsch, Parterre Box
• Thomas May, Opera Now
• Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal
• William Burnett, Opera Warhorses
• Scott Cantrell, Dallas Morning News
• Harlow Robinson, SFCV

House Debut

La Bohème, Act 1

Santa Fe Opera, July, 2025

 Soloman Howard (Colline), Long Long (Rodolfo), Efraín Solís (Schaunard), Szymon Mechliński (Marcello), photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera

Not at the Santa Fe Opera, which I've been attending since 2008, when I saw Adriana Mater, Billy Budd, and Radamisto, but at Parterre Box, which published my review of Santa Fe's La Bohème today. Grateful thanks to Harry Rose for the opportunity to write for Parterre Box, although it's bittersweet: Parterre Box's intended reviewer, Patrick Mack, died unexpectedly earlier this year.

I'm expecting more reviews. John Allison, editor of Opera Magazine, saw a different performance from the one I saw. Note that registration is required for Opera Now and a subscription is required to read Opera Magazine.

• Lisa Hirsch, Parterre Box. Did the well-nigh perfect La Bohème at San Francisco Opera make me crankier than I otherwise would have been about this production? You bet. (NB: will get embarrassing errors, both mine, fixed post-haste.)
• Thomas May, Memeteria; continues at Opera Now; he is much more positive about this production than I was.
• John Allison, Opera Magazine (link to follow; his Santa Fe reviews will not be published for a while)
• Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal (paywall)
• William Burnett, Opera Warhorses
• Harlow Robinson, SFCV