The Santa Fe Opera was wonderful, both in venue and performances. The first night we were there we could see lightning to the southeast as shown in this photo of the stage. The ceiling only covers the stage and the audience. It is open to the sides. We saw wonderful sunsets while there as well.
This is Natalie Dessay as "Violetta" in Verdi's La Traviata. She was totally fabulous in her red wigs. We got a backstage tour of the opera house including the wig and costume rooms. I saw all the wigs- each hair strand individually placed in a net. They like to use Asian hair because it hasn't been treated before. In the costume room was a red-headed Barbie doll with a replica of this costume. Practice makes perfect I guess. Natalie (wearing her high-heeled pink boots) jumped all over the stage set which was lots of blocks in a variety of shapes and angles. The opera is based on La Dame aux Camelias by Alexander Dumas the Younger about the life of the courtesan Marguerite Gautier
We also saw Gluck's Alceste, Donizetti's Elixir of Love, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and a world premiere of Moravec's The Letter which was based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play that was also a wonderful Betty Davis film. In addition to Natalie Dessay, we saw Patricia Racette (in The Letter) and Christine Brewer (in Alceste). Dimitri Pittas made a wonderful "Nemorino" in Elixir which was set in post-war Italy (~1947) as a peasant auto mechanic who falls in love with the educated olive grove owner, "Adina", played by Jennifer Black. It was a very cute production. We enjoyed Alceste the best, however, mostly because we upgraded our seats from the back to the second row. It also had wonderful costumes and dancing by the "Divinites de Styx" who kept trying to drag the mythical Greek Queen to Hades who volunteered to die in place of her husband. Louis Meachem played a somewhat mean "Don Giovanni" who failed to seduce any of his targets on the last day of his life. The singers (none of which I had ever heard of) were all quite good but the banquet scene was in effective and the production lacked sparkle in its black and red sets and costumes which all seemed to come from different time periods.
Each morning we had a 3-hour lecture about the upcoming evening's opera by Ron Grinage who is a pianist that does the SFO's electronic libretto system (English (or Spanish) translations on the back of the seat in front of each audience member). He was very informative and interesting. There were also pre-performance lectures at the opera house which were very entertaining as well. In the afternoon we went on excursions like tours of the backstage, Santa Fe museums, etc. This was all arranged through Elderhostel and included about 24 partipants from all over America. Everyone was very nice and one wrote a blog which you can read http://blog.onopera.com/. The rest of the time we either ate or slept.
We went to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum which included a nice film about her life and many of her paintings. This is Jimson Weed, 1932 which was returned from loan to the White House for many years.
Pedernal, 1941 Scenery around Santa Fe
Finally, this is a painting by Forrest Moses that was illustrating the 2009 SFO poster. Turns out the artist is a fraternity brother and classmate of Moody's, so I left our card and he called us. We went to his art show at a gallery in town and talked old times with him. His art is rather fascinating but mucho expensivo (like $70,000).The plane rides were fine but we are glad to be home with our pups who had a great time at Companion Camp.
