The so-called “offseason.”

It’s a sure sign that opera season is over when you can cruise into the parking lot at 9:00am and find a parking spot within 10 yards of the office. Now that most of our seasonal friends have graduated to their next adventures, the competition for parking is slim to nil. No more trekking to work through the lower grounds amidst lush gardens and crews preparing for the day’s first rehearsal. The parking lot is comparatively empty—just a handful of cars and a few tumbling tumbleweeds.

Our beloved cantina is closed until May of next year and instead of sipping coffee poolside (yep, we even have a pool) with unparalleled views of the Sangre de Cristos, we find ourselves gathering around the coffee pot in the break room like most traditional officemates. But our workspace is a former dude ranch and our break room is the original ranch kitchen – complete with a range stove – so we still manage to break from tradition even in our most basic daily functions.

Although the season is changing, we’re hardly in hibernation. Last weekend, we hosted the annual Mariachi Extravaganza as part of the Fiesta de Santa Fe, tomorrow night we’re welcoming the legendary Willie Nelson to our theater, and next weekend the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta will take over our parking lot. Not too shabby for the so-called “offseason.”

In fact, the first few weeks of September are especially busy for our colleagues in the Production Department as we pack up all 5 productions and figure out what goes where and how to take care of it. Anyone who has ever moved can sympathize with the trials and tribulations of packing. Oh, the cardboard boxes, the newspapers, the bubble wrap, and the tape.  Lots and lots of tape.

Our Properties Director, Randy Lutz, oversees a crew of 8 who are deep in the throes of prop inventory. The process of inventory is a methodical one and it begins as early as opening night, when we know what props are definitely being used in the show. Our crew takes photos of the props and catalogues them, assigning a tag number and writing a description of each prop. Come closing night, the entire props run crew (no less than 34 people!) comes in to work and tags every prop with a catalogue label the minute it’s done being used onstage.

If we’re not keeping a show or it’s not being rented or sold, it will go back to stock in our warehouse in nearby Nambe and used for local rentals or maybe even for another show sometime in the future. This year, all 5 shows are being packed as if they will be rented or sold, so we also have to consider how to pack each piece for serious, long-haul truck travel. We can’t say where the productions are going at this point, but it’s kind of fun to imagine The Last Savage on a cross-country road trip.

The Last Savage was the most prop heavy show of the season in terms of numbers of props, and every piece of foliage from the jungle has to be removed and counted during inventory. Faust props had the most tricks (eg: Faust’s wheelchair and Marguerite’s coffin), and they’ll be packed very carefully in crates for extra protection.

From September 1^st to May 1^st we rent our stock pieces to local individuals and companies, so please keep us in mind if you have any rental needs on an operatic scale!

Wish us luck as we continue to pack up 2011, and if you’re coming to Willie Nelson tomorrow night, we can’t wait to see you there in your best cowboy/cowgirl attire.

Closing Night!

Summer at The Santa Fe Opera has come and gone in the blink of an eye. We went to a county fair, spent time in both church AND prison, danced in a local tavern, sojourned to India, attended a cocktail party in Chicago, and celebrated Christmas Eve in Paris – without so much as leaving the 505 area code.

When we opened our season on July 1^st, we didn’t know whether we’d be able to perform in our hallowed Crosby Theatre due to smoke conditions caused by a wildfire in the Jemez Mountains to our east. Contingency plans were laid and everyone pitched in to ensure that all of our artists, staff, and patrons were safe and that the show would go on – in true SFO fashion – somehow and somewhere.

Can you imagine seeing Faust in a casino? Actually, there are probably worse venues for an opera about temptation…

But, thankfully, it didn’t come to that. The winds were in our favor that evening, and we’ve been spoiled with (mostly) clear skies and trademark Santa Fe sunsets for 38 performances of 5 operas in 7 weeks. And tomorrow night we’ll close the 2011 season with #39, the final performance of Faust.

 

It’s a bittersweet occasion to say goodbye to all of our summer friends and the productions that made 2011 so memorable. The SFO is a pretty big operation with nearly 700 employees in the summer months, and over 20,000 patrons, and when the proverbial curtain comes down tomorrow night, each of us will take away different memories of 2011.

Who could forget the night when the young artist covers for both Rodolfo and Mimi in La boheme took the stage with just a few hours notice? Or how about Peter Sellars running – literally running – from one event to the next on the opening night of Griselda? Or the various members of the animal kingdom who visited the SFO – from wild bears to David Robertson’s dog Milo, a regular attendee at Wozzeck rehearsals.

 

But even as we bid farewell to 2011, let’s not forget that we’re only 10 months away from the opening night of 2012. Design teams for our 2012 productions have been flying in and out of Santa Fe from around the world during the month of August to present their set models, costume sketches, and concepts for Tosca, The Pearl Fishers, Maometto II, King Roger, and Arabella.

So, we’ll all take a breather and a moment or two to remember the 2011 season on Sunday, and on Monday morning we’ll be back to work with a new deadline: June 29, 2012, when Tosca and her infamous love triangle will take the spotlight on opening night of our 2012 season.

Thanks so much for being a part of our 2011 season. We hope you had as much fun as we did!

Apprentice Scenes Take Flight

Every year The Santa Fe Opera features two nights of fully staged scenes from favorite operas that feature our apprentice singers. These are hugely popular, not least of all due to their deeply reasonable ticket prices ($21 adults, $7 kids ages 6-17).

What our audiences may not know is that these scenes are 100% designed by our 73 technical apprentices. These outstanding young men and women come from all over the country to get the boot camp-like experience of being a part of one of the world’s greatest festival seasons. They work crazy hours getting five operas up and running. They do everything from costuming to lighting; props to electrics; wigs & makeup to scenery building.

Aimee Deans of Santa Fe happens to be a local girl. She’s a second year tech apprentice in the costume department and she designed the costumes for the first scene of Sunday night’s program: Flight by Jonathan Dove. Seen the movie The Terminal with Tom Hanks? Same story. Flight premiered at Glyndebourne in 1998 and it’s about a “refugee” who stows away on an airplane and ends up in the airport of an obscure English town. He doesn’t have any paperwork with him, so he can’t go anywhere, and basically ends up living in the terminal.

So, what with mounting 5 regular mainstage productions, and designing last week’s apprentice scene from Handel’s Semele, when did Aimee get the time to design the clothes for Flight? Well, she began her preparations about two weeks ago. While the costume shop makes much of its inventory from scratch for the season, the Apprentice Scenes are usually costumed with clothing that is pulled from what we already have in stock.  

Aimee Deans tailors a captain's hat for "Flight."

Aimee was in search of 4 costumes – 2 men and 2 women – and had to make it all come together in a matter of days. She started by pulling a pilot’s costume and a Hawaiin print dress from stock. She then tailored the outfits to the specific singers. The costumers are allowed to make a scarf or cuffs from scratch, but with the time-crunch, it should really all come from stock. Aimee is assisted by apprentice Lea Preston. “We’re a good team, so that makes it go a lot faster,” says Aimee.

The hardest part about all this according to Aimee? “Definitely the deadline!”

For more information about Flight and the rest of the Apprentice Scenes program, click here.

Gate Crasher

We tend to make much of our “high desert” setting here at The Santa Fe Opera. We tout this Company as one of the few places in the world where you can enjoy opera as part of a vast landscape, an opera house at harmony with the glorious nature that surrounds it. Well, the level of harmoniousness is relative, of course, but we will tell you that our fellow creatures feel pretty comfortable making The Santa Fe Opera grounds their home, or at least a temporary destination.

Why, just this past Sunday night after a nearly full house had filed into the John Crosby Theatre to see our first evening of Apprentice Scenes, a sleepy security guard was dozing during the first notes of Porgy and Bess (sung INCREDIBLY well by Will Liverman, Stephanie Washington, and Michael Dailey, btw), and was surprised by a latecomer. 

A medium-sized black bear awaited entry at the North Gate. After the guard politely asked him for his ticket, the bear hopped the fence and opted to shop the Tesuque Flea Market instead. 

It just goes to show that you can’t please everyone. Even with Gershwin.

“Listen to the Toadstools” – Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family on Wozzeck

The Handsome Family

For those of you who don’t know Rennie Sparks, she’s the wife-half of the husband-and-wife duo, The Handsome Family. 

  For those of you who don’t know The Handsome Family, they’re a highly original alt. country group with highly original lyrics penned by Ms. Sparks. The Handsome Family is known and loved around the world, but we were lucky enough to find out they call Albuquerque home… and that they’re big fans of The Santa Fe Opera. So we asked for Rennie’s thoughts on the opening night of Wozzeck. What ensues is an appreciation of the divine madness of Wozzeck, opera, and maybe madness itself… set in language that makes it clear why The Handsome Family is so beloved for their hauntingly unique lyrics. So without further ado – we’re very pleased to present Rennie Sparks’ take on Wozzeck. 

____

I get giddy just being in the parking lot of The Santa Fe Opera before a show. Ladies in high-end prairie skirts and turquoise squash-blossom necklaces sit in folding chairs sipping champagne. Men in bolo ties talk arias at picnic tables as lizards scurry past their armadillo-skin boots. The hills stretch unimaginably in all directions and the sky always astounds. I’ve seen torrential downpours approaching from miles away and I’ve seen double rainbows. The unofficial first act of any performance here is a perfect sunset that lingers even as you take your seat and white moths soar towards the stage lights in the evening breeze. 

Rennie Sparks attends the opening night of WOZZECK

Maybe it was the wild rain we drove through on the way up from Albuquerque or the flashes of lightning shattering the sky as the music began, but my first thought as Wozzeck began was that it felt like being stuck on a chairlift– that moment when you’re ripped out of a fun day of skiing and suddenly understand just how high up you are, just how powerful the wind is, just how deadly the cold. The motor of the chairlift has stopped and you hear the wind whistling, the cable creaking. You fight a rising panic in the echoing vastness as the pine trees begin to whisper. Yes, this opera is disorienting and full of menace, but it is unforgettable.

Wozzeck is calmly shaving Herr Hauptmann as the first strains of 12-tone music begin, but the stage is already a window into a nightmare– dark shadows stretch like jagged teeth across it in the setting sun. The ceiling trembles suspiciously.

At first the music is utter dissonance and then my ear begins to find motifs. I notice the rustle of the settling audience, the scattered coughs, a distant plane passing– all of it somehow finds its place within the music. Such is the mystery of Wozzeck– it is chaotic enough to make you feel unhinged, but at the same time so immediate that its sound easily incorporates beer steins hitting tables, walls slamming together, a piano lid banging down, even a chorus of snoring men. Still it’s a wild ride. Singers screech and moan. Violins argue with trumpets. Flutes soar with hysteria. Suddenly there’s a plucked harp, softly tinkling bells. There is silence.

We can’t be sure why Wozzeck is losing his mind– Herr Doctor’s experiments, Marie’s infidelity or his own penchant for staring at toadstools? But mad Wozzeck is going and mad we go with him as the music soaks up his blood-red psychosis. Walls fly apart, floors spring up in terrifying angles. People stand on tables, hide under beds. They writhe with lust and turn into zombies. They drip with blood and they laugh themselves silly. There are no soaring harmonies here, no sweet melodies to hum on the way home. The singers are so isolated they struggle to find notes and words that connect coherently.

“If only I could understand the circle of toadstools,” Wozzeck laments and that’s just how this opera feels– like trying to read vital messages written in the wind and rain. A Sisyphean task, perhaps, yet what could be a nobler pursuit? 

Wozzeck leaves me wanting to lie down in the mud and listen to toadstools. It makes me want to sing along with the silent night. Bravo!

- Rennie Sparks         

 

For Wozzeck information or tickets, please visit www.santafeopera.org.  

A PROP TART IS CROWNED

There is a hallowed Opening Night tradition in the Production Department that is legendary on the back deck, almost totally unknown to the administrative staff, and completely underground when it comes to the world at large. That is, until now. Every opening night afternoon at 3 PM, the Prop Tart Queen is crowned.

The Crowning of the Prop Tart Queen is no mere backstage potluck. This is a full-on extravaganza undertaken with the utmost seriousness and all the creativity The Santa Fe Opera has to offer. There are elections. There is campaigning. There is representation. And there are rules.

First of all, only a member of the Props Department can be elected Prop Tart Queen. Both men and women can be elected Queen, but there is no such thing as a Prop Tart King. Second, there is a theme. This year’s was What’s the Price of Your Soul?, in honor of the opening night opera, Faust. Third, on the Friday before opening night, 6 nominees are chosen by the Council of Old Queens (former Prop Tart Queens, of course…).

Starting the week of Opening Night, the nominees campaign. The most effective way to do this, as many politicians will agree, is through bribery. This year’s Prop Tart Queen, junior crafter Aimee Plant of Oswego, Illinois, launched quite an appeal: Monday she gave out waterballoons to cool the staff from the summer heat. Tuesday she made devil’s food cupcakes with fondant horns made from marshmallow & sugar. Bacon chocolate-chip cookies followed (bacon chocolate-chip?! How do you not vote for that?!). Next was fruit leather and chocolate bars. Friday came and Plant offered up fresh berries as a conciliatory gesture towards the digestive tracts she assaulted earlier in the week.

But Plant didn’t simply rely on her baking skills. The girl has brains, too. She made a series of propaganda posters, including one of herself that read: WHERE ARE WE GOING AND WHY ARE WE IN THIS HANDBASKET? Taking a cue from the Obama campaign, Plant decided to harness new media in her play for the throne. She started a microblog where she posted netherworld-related items and other chestnuts.

The tipping point for the judges may have come in Thursday’s talent competition. Plant played “Hot Crossed Buns” on the recorder –with her nose.

By Friday, the afternoon of Opening Night, the voting was done. Production Department heads, designers, directors, the Prop Shop, the Paint Shop and the Costumes Department (represented by an electoral vote of 5) all cast their votes for the Queen. All of Production attended the Prop Tart festivities, and thematic attire, as always, was encouraged. There was food and a champagne toast. The backstage community assembled to watch skits and presentations given by a representative of each department: 

The Pope of Paints
The Earl of Electrics
The Contessa of Costumes
The Duke of Decks (Stage Crew)
The Paradisa of Orchestra Services
The Witch of Wigs

And Aimee Plant was crowned Prop Tart Queen. How does she view the great honor and even greater responsibility of her new title? She told The Back Deck: “Someone put it best when they said, ‘It’s not all sitting in the hell-mouth and drinking champagne.’” Indeed, it is probably much more than we will ever know.

 

Talking Griselda

We don’t even know what to say about Griselda (opening tomorrow, July 16). “Radical” may not be what comes to mind when one thinks of baroque opera, but “radical” this production is. You’ve heard the rundown: Peter Sellars directs, L.A. artist Gronk hand-painted the set. Sellars sets the Vivaldi score in the present… in what is kind of a fictional “Republic of New Mexico.” And check this for gender-bending: two countertenors (men who sing soprano), including the divine David Daniels, sing heroic male roles in vibrant pastel suits; the lovely young soprano Amanda Majeski sings the male aggressor in a costume inspired by Usher. Beyond that, you’ve got Beverly Sills award-winner Isabel Leonard in a quinceañera dress, Paul Groves donning Polo gear and Meredith Arwady in a Navajo blanket.

And it’s awesome. We’ve seen the final dress and there’s one thing that’s for sure: this group is TOTALLY COMMITTED to every note they sing and every gesture they make. Maybe that’s because at the helm are an AMAZING group of talkers. Some quotable moments from Peter Sellars during the past few days in the glow of Griselda:

“That’s what we do as artists – climate change. We can’t convince anyone of anything, but we can slightly shift the atmosphere.”

“Be honest with your irrational self. That’s the space we have to offer in this art form of opera. Opera is immersive.”

“Opera is open space for the unmentionable. [On gender-bending in the 18^th century Venetian theater] No one could talk about it, but people went to see it every night.”

“People can take refuge in music and images – they go beyond words. That’s why opera is powerful in ways that spoken theater can’t touch.”

Gronk on wrestling that big, white space into a set: “I come in like a boxer. You have to throw the first punch immediately or else you’re going to get knocked out before you can get started. You jump right in and there are no mistakes. You keep on hitting and hitting until you dominate that big, white space.”

Ready to bring any of these to the tattoo artist? Well, hold up for a second.  More gems await: if you’re in Santa Fe, come on down to The Lensic for a FREE seminar on Griselda by the creative team at 10 AM on Saturday morning (July 16). Seriously, this is an amazing chance to see these world-class artists who are also world-class TALKERS.

We promise you won’t be bored.   http://bit.ly/rsJlu2

“Never Postpone Joy”: A Toast to Menotti

Yesterday marked the 100^th anniversary of composer Gian Carlo Menotti’s birth. Menotti holds a special place at The Santa Fe Opera, not simply because we are staging his rarely performed and HYSTERICAL early 1960s comedy The Last Savagethis season (opening July 23), but because General Director Charles MacKay worked closely with Menotti at the Spoleto Festival, both in Italy and in Charleston, SC, and has many fond memories of the composer.

Charles shared a few of those memories as a group of Last Savage cast members, stage managers and apprentice singers gathered ‘round the cantina after rehearsal last evening for a champagne toast to Menotti, the man and the music. Charles closed with Menotti’s motto: “Never postpone joy.”

We’ll drink to that.

General Director Charles MacKay and LAST SAVAGE director Ned Canty lead the Company in a toast to Gian Carlo Menotti on his 100th birthday.

Party in the parking lot!

Tailgaters don their devil masks for dinner in the parking lot as the sun sets red over the Jemez.

OPENING NIGHT!

Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come: tonight is the opening night of The Santa Fe Opera’s 55^th season. We’ve been working hard all week focusing lights, tightening up the fat suit, rehearsing, hosting New Mexico policy-makers for dinner, and celebrating with a gala party courtesy of our opening night sponsor, Encantado, an Auberge Resort.

You’ve heard about the wildfires wreaking havoc in New Mexico, and our good neighbor to the north, Los Alamos, in particular, needs all our good vibes tonight. We’re sending them in full force. And we’re sticking by that old show biz motto: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. We’ve been monitoring the air quality vigilantly all week and all is safe for our performers, technicians and patrons, so we are raring to bring Santa Fe its very first FAUST!

And now the magic begins. No opera company on earth knows how to throw a party like us. We start with tailgating in the parking lot at 6 PM. You’ll see cowboy hats, ball gowns, candelabras and pork ‘n beans on paper plates. We’ve got it ALL. (And we’ll be updating the Back Deck with photos, so stay tuned).  

At 8 PM everyone is invited for a champagne toast on the terrace. And then at 9 PM, our new chief conductor, Frederic Chaslin, will strike up the first notes of the National Anthem for all to sing along. Then the overture of Faust will begin as the sun sets over the Jemez Mountains. And VOILA! The season has begun!