As the sun sets over the Sangre de Cristos, a huge sculpture of a skull rises from below stage at the Santa Fe Opera. The specter of death literally hovers over a compelling new production of what many believe to be the world’s most perfect opera: Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”
The company has mounted an extraordinary season to celebrate its 60th anniversary. Continuing through August, four of the five productions, are new: “Don Giovanni,” Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette,” Strauss’ “Capriccio” and Barber’s “Vanessa.” Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West” is a co-production with the English National Opera.
You can see one or all five before the season closes on Aug. 27. Here are capsule reviews.
Mozart’s 1787 masterpiece about an entitled aristocratic who ignores social convention to indulge his sexual appetite has found a near perfect interpretation in Santa Fe. Conceived by Director Ron Daniels and designed by Riccardo Hernandez, the production takes advantage of Santa Fe’s unique setting. Before a note is played, servants costumed in 18th–century livery watch the sun set and the great bronze skull rise.
Sphinx-like, the head oversees Giovanni’s multiple conquests, the misery he leaves behind and his calamitous demise. The specter of death also serves as a projection surface. Flickering images suggest gardens, a mansion, a Spanish street and the fires of hell.
Baritone Daniel Okulitch flamboyantly inhabits the title role, while Kyle Ketelsen counterbalances his master’s arrogance with the comic touch of Leporello, the knowing servant. The various women whom Giovanni seduces prove to be his musical and dramatic match. And bass Soloman Howard’s powerful voice and presence frames the tale as the Commendatore.
In 1867, French Romanticism came into full flower when Charles Gounod composed an opera based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. As a boy, Gounod had seen a production of “Don Giovanni” and letters prove he was stunned by its power. His interpretation of doomed love has a quality of iridescence similar to Mozart’s work. While the tragedy drives toward its inevitable ending, periodic flashes of light diffuse the gloom.
That magical combination has been captured by Director Stephen Lawless and Ashley Martin-Davis, scenic and costume design. The opera opens with two white coffins set in a dark gray mausoleum. Mourners enter entirely in black. When the music suddenly shifts via a flashback to the ball where Romeo and Juliette meet, a mass on-stage costume change takes place. It has to be seen to be believed. Oppressive black disappears, supplanted by creamy ball gowns and colorful military uniforms.
Lawless has time-traveled to the American Civil War. For the most part, it works as the feuding Montagues and Capulets unleash their tribal hatred in verbal taunting, sword fights and death.
Tenor Stephen Costello and soprano Ailyn Pérez portray the star-crossed lovers with aching passion. Four splendid duets carry them from the sparks of first love to their final shared death.
Based on the stories of Danish writer Isak Dinesen, this 20th century work was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera – its first American opera. Composed by Samuel Barber with a libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, it centers on a strange, claustrophobic love triangle.
I have a special fondness for “Vanessa” as it was the first opera I ever saw. The Met premiered it in 1958 and revived it in the 1960s. It’s been performed all over Europe but never in Santa Fe. Director James Robinson has reimagined this chilling Nordic tale with a stylized grey-white set by Allen Moyer and costumes by James Schuette.
The story focuses on Vanessa (soprano Erin Wall), a countess of considerable fortune. She has waited 20 years for her lover to return. In a tense delayed entrance, Anatol (tenor Zach Borichevsky) arrives, but shockingly he is the son of Vanessa’s lover. Like Don Giovanni, he seizes an opportunity to seduce Vanessa’s niece Erika (mezzo Virginie Verrez) but marries Vanessa in the end.
A remarkable quintet brings the opera to its disturbing conclusion with some dark foreshadowing. The mis-matched newlyweds leave for Paris. Erika takes her aunt’s place – waiting for her lover to return.
Barber’s music has been characterized as neo-Romantic, and he drew inspiration from Puccini and Strauss. “Vanessa” is heady, turgid and melodically haunting – grand opera to the core.
Puccini’s wildly Italian interpretation of the American West is an oddity. Based on a play by the American impresario David Belasco, the opera premiered in 1910. It bears all the marks of that rollicking, cliché-ridden era.
Santa Fe partnered with the English National Opera to dust up what’s been called Puccini’s horse opera. It takes place during the California gold rush, and the melodrama is light, fun, even charming. You have to accept the givens.
Set first in a Western bar, then a mountain cabin and finally a small-town street, the opera weaves a standard love triangle.
The girl of the title is Minnie (the estimable soprano Patricia Racette) – bar owner, teacher, mother figure and/or idealized sweetheart to an entire town of miners hoping to strike it rich. A stranger strides into her domain. Dick Johnson aka Ramirez (Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones) captures Minnie’s heart and the enmity of Sheriff Jack Rance (baritone Mark Delavan).
Puccini’s post-Butterfly music is mesmerizing. The principals sing those soaring Italian arias full throttle, and the big men’s chorus is rare. Only the rather static sets seem not up to snuff for Santa Fe.
Richard Strauss’ 16th and final opera, premiered in Munich 1942. But you wouldn’t know from its war-time date and place it had anything serious to say.
A young countess (soprano Amanda Majeski) has two suitors, a poet and a composer. The boys argue whose work is more important in the world of art.
Director Tim Albery has moved the original 18th-century action to the 1940s, the time of the opera’s creation. Scene and costume designer Tobias Hoheisel has created an elegant mid-century salon mixing modern and rococo furnishings.
House party conversation centers on the words-or-music debate and is as superficial as an all nighter in a college dorm. Eventually, even the suitors’ love competition is left unresolved. Strauss concludes what could have been a one-act comic opera with a long wool-gathering third act in which the Countess in a splendid but endless aria -- dithers.
Plot aside, the music is gorgeous, the cast is excellent and many of the comic twists are entertaining. By now you know which operas I would go back to.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theater Critics Association.
If you go
Santa Fe Opera, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Aug. 15; 20, 26; Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West,” Aug. 13, 17, 23, 27; Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette,” Aug. 16, 25; Barber’s “Vanessa,” August 12, 18, 24; R. Strauss’ “Capriccio,” Aug. 19. Tickets range from $31 to $222. For more information: www.santafeopera.org or (800) 280-4654.
