I spent a pleasant afternoon at the opera last Sunday, enjoying Opera Southwest’s performance of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers in Albuquerque. In June, the season begins at the Santa Fe Opera and I’ve already ordered tickets for two performances.
I grew up listening to opera. My father had studied opera, and from earliest childhood I heard him practicing baritone arias. But I rarely saw opera performed because Chicago’s world-class Lyric Opera was out of my price range. That changed when I moved to New Mexico, where opera is more accessible.
Opera has everything: beautiful music, staging and costumes, acting and sometimes a body count. The plots often don’t make much sense. Take Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in which a mythical Norse hero marries his twin sister and their son falls in love with his aunt. (Kinky fellow, that Wagner.) Or that the infidelity in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus is cheerfully forgiven because everyone was drunk on champagne.
But suspending disbelief is part of the fun. So we accept that the zaftig lass singing Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme is dying of consumption. It’s okay for women to play male roles if the key is high enough. And nobody dies quietly.
The themes of opera are universal and timeless: love, jealousy, betrayal and the ever-popular death. So the idea of the au fond du temple saint duet in The Pearl Fishers – in which two men who love the same woman proclaim their friendship — is not much different from the contemporary bros before hoes. I like Bizet’s version better than Jay-Z’s.
Going to the Santa Fe Opera is a distinctively New Mexico experience. The sweepingly modern opera house is open on both sides and at the back of the stage, with a view of the sun setting behind the mountains. A tiny LED screen at each seat displays the libretto in the patron’s choice of New Mexico’s two official languages. So when they see Bizet’s Carmen, an opera about Spaniards sung in French, cultural purists can read the subtitles in Spanish if they wish.
People wear everything from black tie to jeans. Some women go for the Santa Fe casual look: sundress, sandals and $1,000 worth of turquoise. This may be the only opera venue with tailgate parties in the parking lot. Unlike traditional tailgating, the opera crowd prefers chardonnay and salmon. Some folks do it up with tablecloths and candelabra.
Perhaps this year I’ll bring beer and brats to the Santa Fe Opera, just to mix things up.