Opera review
‘Jenůfa’ offers dark but powerful tale
Among the most rewarding aspects of the evening were the restless, passionate and lyrical score.
“I set out to make a contribution to art history. Being liked had nothing to do with it.”
Santa Fe Opera 2019
The power of forgiveness: "Jenůfa"
Written between 1896 and 1903, Jenu˚fa is based on Její pastorkynˇa (Her Stepdaughter), an 1890 play by Gabriela Preissová.
Santa Fe Opera 2019
Dramaturg Cori Ellison: The opera's marriage counselor
If Cori Ellison has heard it once, she’s probably heard it a million times: What exactly is a dramaturg?
Santa Fe Opera 2019
Jenůfa: The essentials
Historical contest: The Czech lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia reached a pinnacle of cultural, intellectual, and political achievement in the 14th and 15th centuries.
It’s an odd sort of irony, but artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa defies our expectations of what glass art is because she uses the medium almost like a weaver would use fiber or a painter would use paint. Judy Tuwaletstiwa: The Dream Life of Objects is at the Center for Contemporary Arts through Sept. 15.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival opened its 47th season on July 14 with a concert featuring a New Mexico premiere (a new work titled IF by celebrated composer John Harbison) and three pieces by giants of the early Romantic era (Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Felix Mendelssohn).
Toots and the Maytals appear at The Bridge at Santa Fe Brewing on Wednesday, July 24.
Terrell's Tune-up
Dylan the trickster: Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix
Warning: Spoilers follow for the Netflix movie Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. Life is full of spoilers. Welcome to the real world, kids.
Amuse-bouche
Puttin' on the spritz: A refreshing refresher course
While recipes do fill the back two-thirds of the book, the opening sections of Spritz: Italy's Most Iconic Aperitivo Cocktail, With Recipes are so packed with carefully researched and engagingly written histories of the drink and the eras and regions in which it evolved (as well as the marketing campaign that brought it to worldwide prominence) that it is hard to think of it as primarily a cookbook for would-be mixologists.
SITE Santa Fe presents Farmhouse/Whorehouse, Suzanne Bocanegra’s third installment of memoir-based artist talks utilizing well-known actors, at 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 21.
Movie Review
Unhappy families: "The Other Story"
“Nobody,” observes the elderly psychologist Shlomo (Sasson Gabai, The Band’s Visit), “ever said parenting was logical.”
Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, a Norway native with a doctorate in conservation biology, employs scientific knowledge, splendid facts, and good writing to make it clear in her book Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects that perceiving insects as any sort of bother is not an option.
Mixed Media
Solid Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold isn’t exactly a household name. But if you’re a fan of Errol Flynn, you’ve certainly heard his music.
Naomi Wolf’s long, ludicrous career has followed a simple formula. She audits herself for some speck of dissatisfaction, arrives at an epiphany — one that might contravene any number of natural laws — and then extrapolates a set of rules and recommendations for all women.
Random Acts
Harp magic: Edmar Castañeda
The Colombian virtuoso harpist Edmar Castañeda is featured in a free New Mexico Jazz Festival concert Tuesday, July 23, at 6 p.m. on the Santa Fe Plaza.
The Santa Fe Desert Chorale opens its 37th annual summer season this weekend with two chamber concerts at The Church of the Holy Faith, one at 2 p.m. Friday, July 19 and the second, at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 20; the latter is followed by a post-concert dinner at La Posada de Santa Fe.
Random Acts
Brahms at the museum: Kirill Gerstein
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival continues on at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 24, with a concert featuring Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G minor and noted pianist Kirill Gerstein, at the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Jennifer Elise Foerster and Layli Long Soldier are among the writers on tap for the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Summer Readers Gathering. The event begins Saturday, July 20 and runs nightly through July 27 (no reading on Wednesday, July 24). All readings are free of charge, begin at 6 p.m., and are held in the auditorium of the Library and Technology Center at IAIA.
Random Acts
Giant steps are what you take: Life in space
Astronomer Richard Wallace presents a multimedia lecture, “The Past and Future of Manned Space Exploration,” at 7 p.m. Friday, July 19, at the New Mexico History Museum.
Life can be easy when we say little, do less, relax, and enjoy the summer while Mercury is retrograde, from July 7 to 31. But most of us won’t have time for that. This…
Review capsules
Through the Flower Art Space
Opera review
Santa Fe Opera gives Mozart a contemporary twist
Purists who insist on absolute fidelity to the opera’s original time and place are hereby warned away; others should invest in tickets to one of the remaining performances of Così fan tutte.
An age-old story of love and fidelity, Così fan tutte follows two couples engaged to be married. The Santa Fe Opera’s new production takes the audience to a somewhere (or is it a nowhere?) far from 18th-century Naples.
“Rock music is essentially a hybrid type of music that incorporates elements of folk and blues and country and gospel and whatever, like that. Camper [Van Beethoven] has a broad palette of styles that it incorporates. We get into the Eastern European stuff, all the surf stuff that was heavily influenced by Middle Eastern music,” said front man David Lowery. Lowery brings his two bands, Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, to The Bridge at Santa Fe Brewing, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 18.
Amuse-Bouche
Eat like a diva: Food with an operatic flavor
Five dinners. Five operas. So many possible pairings. Pasatiempo plucks imaginative food options — all based on elements in the works — from the stories of Santa Fe Opera’s 2019 season.
Love. Lust. Bromance. Duplicity. Death.
Random Acts
Jazz of different stripes: Cha Wa
The colorful brass band/Mardi Gras Indian group Cha Wa plays Music on the Hill in Santa Fe at St. John’s College, 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 17, and at Albuquerque’s Outpost Performance Space at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 18.
Slow down. If life gets hectic, sit still, if just for a minute. Summer’s heat and five planets in retrograde ask us to take our time and think things through. Catch up and reconnect with the past, work on old projects, and handle life right here, right now.
Santa Fe Opera 2019
The essentials: "Così fan tutte"
Così fan tutte can be viewed as the quintessence of the Enlightenment, the 18th-century movement that believed “The proper study of mankind is man,” as Alexander Pope put it in An Essay on Man.
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Dancing the weight of time: Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
Choreographer Nicolo Fonte’s full-length work for the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet was inspired by dying flowers. It’s called Beautiful Decay.
Movie Review
Country girl: "Wild Rose"
Music drama, R, 101 minutes, Center for Contemporary Arts, 3 chiles
Random Acts
Boundaries and Beauty: "I Don’t Have a Type"
The mixed-media exhibition I Don’t Have a Type, created by three Albuquerque artists, Caitlin Carcerano, Emma Rose Casady, and Izabelle Fernandez, opens at 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 13, at [AC]2 Gallery.
Movie Review
The write stuff: "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am"
The appeal of this stirring documentary is the pleasure it affords in spending of a couple of hours in the world of the great Toni Morrison, her friends, and her literary legacy.
Random Acts
Human expression: Cellist Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson steps outside his orchestra roles this weekend in a pair of solo concerts that will test his instrumental voice: 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, at SITE Santa Fe and 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 14, at Las Puertas Event Center in Albuquerque.
Photogenesis: Patrick Manning at Foto Forum
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival 2019
Beautifully challenging: 47th annual Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival launches its 2019 season Sunday, July 14 with a concert highlighted by the New Mexico premiere of IF, a monodrama for soprano and ensemble by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison. Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert are also on the program, which will be repeated on Monday, July 15.
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival 2019
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival: Five Must-Hear Concerts
Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) for Three Masked Players and more.
Random Acts
Chamber missions: Concerts at San Miguel Chapel
Members of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, along with American and international musicians, will appear in various unexpected combinations as the second season of Chambe…
It’s not your imagination. The catchy Guster song that you’ve been hearing on the radio, “Overexcited,” does sound remarkably like the 1982 Madness hit “Our House.” And Guster front man Ryan Miller really is singing in a British accent as he narrates a neighborhood walk.
Santa Fe Opera 2019
Exit, stage right: Backstage at the Santa Fe Opera
When the audience settles into their seats and Puccini’s beloved score begins, they’ll see one face of La bohème, just one facet, the one they were intended to see. But there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes before, during, and after a performance.
Taos Picnic in the Park Concerts
Mesmerizing a crowd: Lake Street Dive's not-so-secret weapon
AMP coordinated the 4th of July Music Weekend Getaway in Taos’ Kit Carson Park, where Lake Street Dive plays on Friday, July 5. The band is part of a multi-day lineup that kicked off with WAR and Ozomatli on July 4 and finishes on Saturday, July 6, with The Mavericks and Los Lobos.
Many summers ago, I tagged along on a weekend trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, with some friends who were serious habitual gamblers. We stayed at the Stardust Resort and Casino, which had not yet been imploded and razed, and while I clearly recall a friend winning $25,000 during one very long night of baccarat, I have utterly forgotten any specifics about the food we ate.
Art of Space
Resculpting history: The Eugenie Shonnard House
Sculptor Eugenie Shonnard’s (1886-1978) lovely Santa Fe residence at 1411 Paseo de Peralta now serves as the quarters of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.
Random Acts
Get your vine on: The Santa Fe Wine Festival
The Santa Fe Wine Festival is celebrating its 26th anniversary with a wide range of festivities at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, featuring New Mexican wines from 20 vintners around the state. The event runs from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday, July 6, and Sunday, July 7.
Make the most of this weekend. It begins with a sociable Leo moon that encourages us to build resilience by enjoying our lives and one another’s company.
Random Acts
Folk art gets grooving: "Procession of Nations"
On the evening of July 11, the Santa Fe Plaza plays host to scores of artists from around the globe with the International Folk Art Market’s annual “Procession of Nations.” The free community celebration starts with the folk-artist procession at 5:30 p.m.; music begins at 6:00 p.m.
Random Acts
Beauty from darkness: David Berkeley
David Berkeley plays at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, July 5, as part of the Sunset in the Garden concert series at Santa Fe Botanical Garden.
Book Review
"Very Nice" by Marcy Dermansky
It’s gospel in the publishing business that readers want light, enjoyable fare this time of year, and Very Nice, Marcy Dermansky’s fourth novel, fits the bill.
Sabine Hauert is a robotics researcher intrigued by the problem-solving possibilities inherent in engineering robotic swarms. Her lecture, “Swarm Engineering Across Scales,” takes place at the Lensic at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9.
CHILE PAGES
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Chile pagesChiles, July 19-25
Movie show times
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Showtimes, July 19-25Showtimes, July 19-25
Culinary Arts
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Amuse-bouchePuttin' on the spritz: A refreshing refresher course
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Amuse-BoucheEat like a diva: Food with an operatic flavor
- Getting fortified: Dining experiences before the opera
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Amuse-BoucheOdds in your flavor: Cottonwood Kitchen at Tesuque Casino
- Dogs and ice cream: A guide to the taste of summer
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Amuse-BoucheThe alchemy of East and Southwest: When it works, it's wonderful
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AMuse-BoucheArroyo Vino’s vegetable tempura
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Amuse-Bouche - NM ClassicsThe pride of Central Avenue: Loyola's Family Restaurant
- The plate outdoors: the best patios in town
- Short takes: A snapshot of recent reviews
- "Buttermilk Graffiti": Stories that stick to your ribs
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Restaurant ReviewDumpling Tea & Dim Sum: Satisfying but narrow expression of dim sum
- Los Luceros Grain Team at IAIA
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Amuse-Bouche'You can't just get one': Hospitality-industry tattoos
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Restaurant ReviewMagical mealism: Fiesta Oaxaca