What do you get when you combine a futuristic setting, romantic comedy and a traveling opera company?
The Santa Fe Opera’s spring touring production of “UnShakeable.”
Throughout April from Albuquerque to Denver, SFO will stage a short, new, one-act opera. Part of an impressive outreach program, the company is finally coming back to Durango after a decade’s absence for a free, family-friendly program.
“UnShakeable,” a one-act opera, will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Fort Lewis College.
Designed to celebrate a world-wide Shakespeare anniversary (the bard died 400 years ago on April 23, 1616), Santa Fe Opera commissioned a work that’s light and tuneful.
Composed by Performance Santa Fe’s General Director Joe Illick with a libretto by Andrea Fellows Walters, SFO’s director of Education and community engagement, the work is set 25 years in the future. “UnShakeable” takes place in an abandoned American theater and tells the story of two young actors. Wyatt (baritone Jarrett Ott) and Meridian (soprano Adelaide Boedecker) once knew each other. They may have had a romance. They may have been Shakespearean actors who performed together.
But at the beginning of a pandemic known as Erasure, they were separated. The worldwide virus has caused memory loss of varying degrees in everyone. Wyatt has been searching for Meridian for three years. Her only memories are of lines from Shakespeare.
Wyatt and Meridian try to recover and reconnect bits of their past as the opera explores themes of memory, love and loss. And they employ the power of music to help them. Along the way, you’ll hear passages from Shakespearean works such as “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “Shrew,” “Dream,” “The Tempest” and most certainly, “Romeo and Juliet.”
In an interesting twist, the audience will become players in the opera. Dubbed The Wishing Star Chorus, the audience will be invited to sing along in spots, with words projected on a screen.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open a half hour before the performance. Less than an hour long, “Unshakeable “is perfect for families.
Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, art historian and arts journalist.
If you go
Santa Fe Opera presents “UnShakeable,” a new opera for all ages and for the Shakespeare 400, composed by Joe Illick, libretto by Andrea Walters. 7:30 p.m. April 28 at the College Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College. Running time 40 minutes. Free. No tickets required. Sung in English.
