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Interest in the new opera at Santa Fe this year ran especially high. The Letter (seen Aug. 7), composed by Paul Moravec to a libretto by Terry Teachout based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play, was intended to be an instantly accessible work with wide popular appeal. It may be just that. For a start, the opera is an improvement on the play, which is verbose, faultily structured and moralistic; instead, Teachout's terse libretto recaptures the stringent economy of the much finer story, also by Maugham, upon which the play is based. This tale — of a planter's wife in British Malaya who, in a jealous rage, shoots her lover but gets away with it through her lawyer's purchasing a letter that could incriminate her — takes little more than ninety minutes to perform, even though Teachout and Moravec have added material of their own. In Maugham's story, Leslie Crosbie, the planter's wife, is a monster of hardheartedness and amorality; however, in the opera there are flashbacks in which she passionately engages with her lover. At the end, she commits suicide rather than face a cold life of isolation. While Maugham's story is consistently ironic, the opera adds passion and invites sympathy with its characters.

All this makes for a gripping evening of theater. Moravec's score is richly orchestrated and, like much of modern opera, functions like music for the movies; it amplifies emotions, emphasizes confrontation and crisis and drives the action forward. But it also creates a dramatic world in which singing seems to be the only appropriate medium. The thematic and structural unity of the music is not readily apparent at first hearing, but as a dramatic language it is often thrilling. Reminiscences of love are heard through the lush harmonies of nineteenth-century opera. Legal negotiations are harsh and staccato, with voices and orchestra disconnected. A brilliant satire of the gossipy, racist culture of British colonialism is built on jazz rhythms of the 1920s, and Leslie's suicide, accompanied by brutal chords, is a mighty impressive finale. Teachout's libretto allows the music space to explore the layers of the drama and leaves time for atmospheric interludes bordering on the eerie between the nine scenes of the action.

It would have been difficult to muster a stronger cast for the premiere. Patricia Racette had to represent a more conflicted and contradictory character than the central figure in either Maugham's story or play, and there was a danger that the coexistence of passion and coldheartedness could strain credibility. But Racette's consistently powerful singing and flamboyant command of melodrama — at times she seemed a dead ringer for Joan Crawford — carried the day. James Maddalena, as the lawyer, Howard Joyce, who is drawn into corruption by loyalty to his friends, gave a psychologically subtle portrayal of moral ambivalence and, in a soliloquy recalling Captain Vere's final solo in Billy Budd, raised the dilemma that Joyce finds himself in to the level of tragedy. The robust baritone of Anthony Michaels-Moore might have been too strong for the broken figure of Robert Crosbie, the betrayed husband, but he represented moral weakness, emotional dependence and alcoholic indulgence with such devastating detail that Crosbie seemed symbolic of the corruption at the heart of the entire colonial enterprise. Among the rest of the large cast, Roger Honeywell, as the murdered lover, Hammond, gave a memorable portrayal of the boredom and despair at the heart of the colonialist's life, while Mika Shigematsu endowed the sympathetic figure of Hammond's Chinese mistress with dignity, thus strengthening the anti-colonial bias of the story.

Jonathan Kent's direction was fast-moving and clear. Unfortunately, while Hildegard Bechtler's sets ingeniously accommodated multiple scenes, they and Duane Schuler's lighting were concerned more with creating the atmosphere of film noir than with capturing the atmosphere of the jungle that has such an insidious influence on the characters' lives. Patrick Summers drove the orchestra to climaxes of shocking intensity.

Will The Letter find its way into the repertoire? The warm response of the Santa Fe audience suggests the work may have legs and gives one confidence that opera is still an art form with currency for our time.

According to a local radio plug for Santa Fe's production of Alceste, Gluck's opera is about the "transformative power of love." That is a questionable claim. Alceste is more about death: in fact, it must be one of the few operas that center exclusively on what it is like to die and how the impact of death affects the living. Neither Gluck nor Euripides, upon whose play the opera is based, offers much comfort. Much of the action is composed of formal rites of mourning, but these are thrown into a disquieting light when, at the climax of the action, Alceste admits she has sacrificed herself for her husband, Admète, and he turns upon her with startling viciousness and vilifies her for leaving him alone on earth. Death, rather than uniting people through compassion for a communal loss, reveals previously unacknowledged sources of resentment and distrust that can kill love. Although Gluck's action ends happily, in Francisco Negrin's production (seen Aug. 5), during the concluding divertissement, all the inhabitants of Thessaly, including the chorus, are swept from the stage into Hades, which, despite the music's cheerfulness, seems an apt conclusion to a disturbing action.

Despite the glories of its score, Alceste is a dour work, hardly guaranteed to engage the enthusiasm of its audience, but Negrin was at great pains to sustain theatrical interest. The dark-robed chorus, which had been drilled in a gestural language with a classical base, was a dominant presence and registered vividly the many phases of mourning. While they seemed to have stepped fresh from the Theatre of Dionysus, the gods and messengers of Hades recalled the angular exoticism of Balinese stick puppets. The French version was used, so there was much dancing, choreographed by Ana Yepes, who characterized humans through effete folk dancing and reserved the fireworks for Hades, where dances were fiendishly energetic, even humorous. In Louis Désiré's claustrophobic design, the human world was placed between two massive walls and, for the first two acts, dominated by a large, broken egg, standing in for the temple of Apollo. The walls closed to create the barren landscape of Hades. Though the action is static, this production was constantly on the move — too much so, perhaps, as there were few moments to savor the somber timbre of the score.

Paul Groves did not attempt to resolve the unpleasantly conflicting traits of Admète's character. He was no model husband but a man caught between impulses of aggression, cravenness and self-pity, which pushed the action toward catastrophe. Early on, the upper reaches of his voice sounded constricted and inflexible, but once he had warmed up, his incisive tenor articulated Admète's flaws distressingly. Groves skillfully adopted the gestural language of the chorus to convey psychological disorder. Christine Brewer, as Alceste, radiated a noble presence but did not accommodate her acting to the style of the production, which weakened the impact of her singing. At moments, she touched depths of pathos — at "Ah, malgré moi," before she descended to Hades, and "Ah divinités," when she pleaded with the gods of death to relent — but fiery moments, such as the electrifying "Divinités du Styx," were muted, and the action as a result lacked contrast and vigor. Jennifer Forni, an apprentice, was a strong leader of the chorus. Wayne Tigges was a vocally powerful though physically rather unconvincing Hercule, while Tom Corbeil and Matthew Morris, clad in Désiré's eerie costumes, were impressive as the Infernal God and Apollo. In the pit, Kenneth Montgomery explored to the full Gluck's capacity to achieve massive effect with a small number of instruments.



Young love: Black and Pittas in Elisir at Santa Fe © Ken Howard 2009

An antidote to Gluck's relentless tragedy was offered in Stephen Lawless's hugely entertaining production of L'Elisir d'Amore (seen Aug. 6). Set in Italy during World War II, it presented Belcore and his troupe as American soldiers, proverbially oversexed, overpaid and over there. The village they occupied was marked by its normality. Adina was a young, attractive schoolmarm, Nemorino a mechanic, devoted not only to Adina but to a snazzy red two-seater. Ashley Martin-Davis's set was dominated by a rolling advertising board that featured pictures that commented wittily on the action. This twentieth-century world teemed with an energy that was impossible to resist. Lawless is a master of detail — moments such as the arrival of a leather-jacketed priest on a Vespa aroused gales of laughter — and of staging. The village women's preparation to seduce Nemorino once they learned he was rich was a masterpiece of comedy.

The bustle of the production was enhanced by the committed conducting of Corrado Rovaris, who made Elisir more than just a charming concoction of ingratiating melodies, reminding us that it registers musical changes of historic significance. The older, more corrupt generation is characterized by Rossinian patter, which Rovaris observed with precise, beautifully sprung tempos, the younger generation by the lyrical romanticism that Donizetti was to make particularly his own. The sweeping Italianate melodies of the plentiful ensembles created an unexpectedly moving sense of community.

This production must have been a source of pride for Santa Fe Opera, as all five principals were either graduates or current members of the company's apprentice program. Dimitri Pittas, who four years ago was attracting attention for the refined timbre of his light tenor, has now acquired a more substantial, darker vocal presence but has not sacrificed tonal purity — and he can act! His Nemorino was no illiterate klutz but a young man who, with delightful spontaneity, is discovering the joys and woes life has to offer. He grew from the simplistic sentimentalism of "Quanto è bella" to the articulation of mature, compassionate love in "Una furtiva lagrima." No less pleasing was the relaxed, witty Jennifer Black, who has lost all trace of woodenness onstage. She made sense of Adina's conflicting emotions, in part because from the start it was clear her Adina was in love with Nemorino. This gave a psychological complexity to her role, the unfolding of which made the action unusually interesting. Her easy command of Donizetti's coloratura gave her the freedom to create a finely nuanced character. While Patrick Carfizzi as Belcore sang flat a few too many times for comfort, he has a commanding voice and a wicked capacity to represent all the worst features of America from a European point of view. Thomas Hammons, as Dulcamara, delivered the patter songs with virtuosity and, in a Dickensian way, made a despicable snake-oil salesman into someone we almost liked. Rachel Schutz, currently an apprentice, brought arch charm and a heightened sense of character to the underdeveloped role of Giannetta.

Lindsey, McKern, van den Heever, Phillips, Workman and Meachem in Santa Fe's misjudged Don Giovanni
© Ken Howard 2009

Chas Rader-Shieber's production of Don Giovanni, revived from 2004, is based on an intriguing concept: it seems to take place in hell, from which Giovanni is cast down to heaven. But the production has lost its edge. Blocking emerged vague and unmotivated at times, the action seemed static, and crucial moments, such as the arrival of the Commendatore for supper, were poorly staged. Misjudgments in timing from Lawrence Renes on the podium weakened the impact of the drama, and singers and orchestra were sometimes at odds. Most of the cast had problems with breath and volume control, patches of inaudibility, and strain. But there were moments of magnificence as well. Charles Workman was an unusually powerful Don Ottavio, and while a split in his voice made "Dalla sua pace" a trial to listen to, his "Il mio tesoro" was the most memorable I have heard. Similarly, Elza van den Heever, as Donna Anna, was squally in Act I, but later she reached heights of mesmerizing sublimity in "Non mi dir." While Susanna Phillips had difficulty settling in as Donna Elvira, she wrung hearts with "Mi tradì." Lucas Meachem, a ruthless and dangerously attractive Don Giovanni, sang with consistency until he lost stature in the final scene, while Matthew Rose played a superlatively laconic and offbeat Leporello. Kate Lindsey was a comically gauche Zerlina, more interested in Giovanni than in the solid, obtuse Masetto of Corey McKern. Harold Wilson played the Commendatore of Act I as if he were drunk — a first in my experience.



Dessay and Pirgu in Santa Fe Traviata © Ken Howard 2009

But for many, the high point of the Santa Fe season was Natalie Dessay's first attempt at Violetta. She and director Laurent Pelly, her frequent colleague, may not seem to be ideal interpreters of La Traviata. Both have made their names primarily in comedy, so one might expect from them a production centered on the satirical aspects of Verdi's drama. But they went to the opposite extreme. This was a severe, haunting Traviata that never allowed one to forget that Violetta and her frenetic companions are a step from the grave. The abstract, askew blocks of Chantal Thomas's set recalled Jewish cemeteries and the grimmest of Europe's commemorative sites, the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. As Violetta and her companions skipped from tomb to tomb, using them as stages on which to enact hysterical sexual rituals, or as platforms for the louche display of the female body, they committed collective acts of hubris that starkly accentuated the tragedy. Gone were the details of Parisian social life and the aristocratic veneer that coats so many productions of Traviata. Instead, this production explored the energies and flaws that create and obliterate love and examined our uneasy relationship with death. Pelly revealed himself to be a master of stage space. In the staging of Flora's party, the movement of the chorus alone exposed how we cosset and damn our iconic celebrities. The lily was never gilded, and, as is appropriate in tragedy, there was not a touch of moralizing anywhere.

Natalie Dessay does not produce unbroken streams of silver or creamy sound; her voice often encounters obstacles, such as hoarseness, patches of silence and stretches of inaudibility, and there is a hooded presence from which her voice constantly fights to break free to express itself fully. It always does, and then it shows itself to be agile, a true coloratura capable of investing every moment with dramatic significance. Vocally, her Violetta reflected the struggle between death and life that was the theme of the production. Dessay always opposes her fragile presence with an impulsive energy that she converts into stances of defiance and fitful determination; this meant that her Violetta always insisted that her needs be heard. Grand statements such as "Dite alla giovine" were not delivered with rhetorical poise but with Violetta cowering, as if it was a message to herself, not an announcement of tragic resignation. Violetta's death, performed among the sheeted graves, had a psychological accuracy that left unforgettable images of loneliness cauterized in our memory.

This Traviata had a strong sense of ensemble. The clear, sweet-toned tenor of Saimir Pirgu easily conveyed Alfredo's vulnerability. Laurent Naouri, as the elder Germont, was the only character who looked Victorian — an uncanny mix of Giuseppe Verdi and Thomas Carlyle — and he sang with the power, severity and generosity that one would expect of either of these gentlemen; his impassioned "Di Provenza" was a musical highpoint. Emily Fons, an apprentice singer, was an alluring Flora, while Wayne Tigges, as Baron Douphol, and Harold Wilson, as Doctor Grenvil, strongly characterized parts that can lack individuality.

There was an interesting relationship between pit and stage. The orchestra, under Frédéric Chaslin, played with restraint and such precise attention to Verdi's tempos that one appreciated anew the graciousness of the score. In contrast, the chorus sang and acted with a passion that resisted, even belied the calmer sounds rising from the pit. The fundamental tensions of Pelly's production were complemented by the overall musical execution of Verdi's score.

SIMON WILLIAMS

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