Classics like ‘La Traviata’ contrast with debut exploring televangelism in 1980s.
The new season of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on the PBS Great Performances series begins with The Hours, a new opera by composer Kevin Puts starring Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara that was so wildly popular the company has already scheduled it again as part of its next season.
Virginia Woolf, née Adeline Virginia Stephen (1882-1941), is widely considered one of the finest and most influential authors of the 1900s, noted especially for her no…
Hundreds of costumes and accessories will be available to purchase at the Santa Fe Opera's first costume shop sale since 2019, on Saturday, March 11.
A prodigious opera in Denver
Opera Colorado steps out of the tried-and-true repertory path with a rare new production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), written when the future Hollywood composer was in his early 20s. It was one of the most popular operas of the 1920s, then almost totally disappeared, and is now being rediscovered.
Albuquerque's Opera Southwest will set a Rossini record with its upcoming Count Ory, a French-language masterpiece that combines sublime music with zany comedy. When it opens on Sunday, Feb. 5, the company will have produced more operas by Rossini than any other American company, pulling ahead of even the mighty Metropolitan Opera.
Three hours + three divas in 'The Hours'
Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara star in the three leading roles in the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD production based on Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel.
Opera West sends in the clowns
Pagliacci, one of the most famous verismo operas ever written, is having what is almost certainly its first Santa Fe production, courtesy of Opera West at St. Francis Auditorium. Verismo means states of high dudgeon among the lower classes, usually involving adultery, as indeed it does in Ruggero Leoncavallo's masterpiece.
Questioning America
Using music, imagery, and spoken words from 1964's "Freedom Summer," This Little Light of Mine dramatizes the struggles and oppression Black Americans endured in trying to get the right to vote.
The original caped crusader, Zorro, is arriving in Nuevo Mexico with a tale of Alta California, thanks to Albuquerque's Opera Southwest and composer Hector Armienta. Swashbuckling sword fights, the wooing of damsels, and a flamenco dance scene are all to be expected.
Two Santa Fe Opera leaders, Charles MacKay, general director from 2009 to 2018, and Sue Marineau, past board president and current chairman, will receive major honors from Opera America.
The passionate savagery of 'Medea'
The first offering in the Met Live in HD series this fall is Luigi Cherubini’s seminal opera, with Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role.
Santa Fe Opera’s SWAN song
High-quality video screenings of the Santa Fe Opera’s 2022 Carmen and The Barber of Seville productions will take place on Saturday, Sept. 17, (Carmen) and Sunday, Sept. 18 (The Barber of Seville), at Santa Fe’s SWAN Park.
‘The Werewolf’ prowls ABQ
One of the first operas by a woman to be professionally produced, Louise Bertin's 1827 The Werewolf is receiving an open-air staging at the Albuquerque Museum's amphitheater, courtesy of the intrepid Opera Southwest.
You be the judge!
The Santa Fe Opera's vocal and technical apprentices wrest the stage away from their currently more illustrious colleagues starring in the mainstage productions for an opera scenes program with excerpts by Strauss (Johann and Richard), Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Wagner, and more.
'M. Butterfly' caps a solid Santa Fe Opera season
The world premiere of M. Butterfly is a successful operatic adaptation of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play.
The butterfly effect
M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play, is now an opera with a text by the playwright and music by Huang Ruo. Its world premiere is on Saturday, July 30 at the Santa Fe Opera.
'M. Butterfly': The essentials
This look at M. Butterfly begins with the surprising news report that led to David Henry Hwang's celebrated 1988 play, then segues to an overview of the opera version's characters and plot, and of the careers of its creators, Hwang and Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo.
Meet Sophia Maekawa, first-year apprentice
The mezzo-soprano is covering two roles, Comrade Chin in M. Butterfly and Rosina in The Barber of Seville, as well as chorus duties in Carmen and Falstaff.
It’s just the second Richard Wagner opus to be staged here and almost certainly the longest piece in company history.
Projecting a state of suspended animation
The longest piece ever staged by the Santa Fe Opera and only the second Wagner opera in the company’s 65-year-history, Tristan und Isolde will make plentiful use of projections on a set designed by a pair of young architects.
Tristan und Isolde: Essentials
Need-to-know background and plot points for the upcoming Santa Fe Opera production of Wagner's influential composition.
Meet Jonah Hoskins, second-year apprentice
Jonah Hoskins, tenor, may be playing the part of Sailor in Tristan und Isolde, but he doesn’t consider himself a Wagnerian.
Falstaff continues the Santa Fe Opera's winning trend this season with a staging that's lively, a cast that's mostly excellent, and picture-perfect Jacobean-era costumes.
The Santa Fe Opera's new Falstaff is a co-production with Scottish Opera. The increasing popularity of co-productions has as much to do with artistic issues as it does with saving on expenses, and they can bring unusual challenges as well as satisfactions.
Falstaff: The essentials
Key things to know — including the people, plot, and playwright — to prep for the SFO production.
Meet Anthony León, second-year apprentice
The tenor covers Fenton in Santa Fe Opera's production of Falstaff.
Pre-game with the Wagner Society
The Wagner Society of Santa Fe hosts a tailgate event at the Santa Fe Opera, followed by attendance at the final dress rehearsal for Tristan und Isolde, which is only the second Wagner opera ever to be staged here and the first since The Flying Dutchman in 1988.
When the audience is laughing uproariously and applauding before the overture ends — especially when there's steady rain falling beyond on the open hall — you know you’ve got a hit on your hands.
Those insisting on swirling matador capes, flamenco dresses and lots of 19th-century local color will be disappointed.
Santa Fe Opera's 2022 season is back to its pre-Covid scope, with five mainstage productions and a full complement of associated activities, including pre-performance talks, dining options, and facility tours.
Perspective shift
There’s no opera more freighted with audience expectations, performance stereotypes, and 19th-century cultural encrustations than Carmen. With its female director/designer team and the singers portraying Carmen and Micaëla, the viewpoint for SFO's production is very much a story of today.
Read them and weep
Gioachino Rossini and Cesare Sterbini made audiences laugh when their Barber of Seville premiered in Rome in 1816. In Santa Fe in 2022, Italian speakers are few and far between, so the composer and librettist get help from the five-person team that creates the English and Spanish titles for all Santa Fe Opera productions.
Impress your friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers with your opera knowledge by learning just 15 German words relating to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. It opens at the Santa Fe Opera in a month, so that's just one word every two days.
Two of the pieces — Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka and Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo — are new to the company, and two — Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Claude Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande — return to the repertory after long absences.
Musical stories told by a maestro
Joe Illick is the featured presenter in "Opera — Telling Stories through Music," an online event hosted by the Santa Fe Opera Guild previewing the Santa Fe Opera’s 2022 season
The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD broadcast season closes on Saturday, June 4, with Australian composer Brett Dean’s 2017 take on Hamlet.
Class is in session; prep for Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville, which plays at the Santa Fe Opera this summer from July 2 to Aug. 26.
If you’d like to know more about opera but are intimidated by its jargon and complexity, the Santa Fe Opera Guild’s Discover Opera is just for you.
Lighting a fire under American opera
The Metropolitan Opera production of Fire Shut Up In My Bones is now being made available for free viewing, courtesy of PBS’ Great Performances series
When visitors to the Santa Fe Opera hear there are more than 700 employees working during the season, they’re impressed. When they hear that 70 are full-time, year-round employees, they’re surprised.
There may never be a more potent opera subject than Frida Kahlo and her volcanic relationship with Diego Rivera. Frida, Robert Xavier Rodriguez’ 1991 opera about the iconic Mexican visual artists is making an overdue New Mexico premiere, thanks to Albuqerque’s Opera Southwest.
In this New Year’s Day performance, Laurent Pelly’s storybook staging of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon is presented by the Met with an all-new family-focused, 95-minute version that’s sung in English.
Virtual Vivace, the Santa Fe Opera Guild’s online book club, explores The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Shakespeare comedy at the center of Falstaff.
The familiar strains of music by Puccini, Bizet, Donizetti, and Mozart will return to Santa Fe on Friday, Dec. 24, at A Night at the Opera, a new collaboration between the Santa Fe Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera.
Hot topics, tepid opera
Hometown to the World, the second installment in the Santa Fe Opera’s Opera for All Voices initiative, had its local premiere at the Lensic Performing Arts Center with performances on Dec. 17 and 19.
In 2008, an ICE raid at a kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, devastated the town’s population and economy. The raid’s impact on the small, ethnically diverse community is the subject of a new one-act opera, Hometown to the World, which will be staged by the Santa Fe Opera.
The Metropolitan Opera production of Eurydice stars soprano Erin Morley and is the latest entry in the company’s Live in HD broadcast series.
A powerful new 'Pagliacci'
A first-rate cast performs in Lyric Opera of Chicago's adaptation of Pagliacci, which is set in the current day, outside and inside the opera house. But there's a twist.
The Los Angeles Opera's upcoming production of Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella gives Santa Feans a chance to see a wonderful and warmhearted comedy that hasn’t been produced locally in 55 years.
After going dark in 2020, the Santa Fe Opera is back with postponed programming and a standard five-opera season.
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Culinary Arts
- Out There!
- The neighborhood dish: Café Grazie
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ReviewThe good and the great: The Compound
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Amuse BoucheSimple and yet sophisticated
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Random ActsBargain bites
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Amuse-BoucheA taste of Mexico
- Save room for dessert
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Restaurant reviewTrue to their roots: Cafecito
- Revisiting an old reliable
- Gifts for foodies and people who just like to eat
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ReviewWhy make it at home?
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Restaurant ReviewA delicious celebration of eating out again
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Amuse-BoucheEye of the storm
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Amuse BoucheExtended family: Fiesta with the Franks
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Random ActsCelebrate the grape