Last night, we were treated to The Santa Fe Opera's production of "La Boheme"(sic). It was an excellent production! However, I was a little disappointed in the design and the direction. Understandably, my expectations were very elevated due to the reputation of SFO productions. Two things stand out: The entire second act which is always a challenge to stage because of all the activity, children's chorus, military band, café festivities, arguments, etc., was crammed into roughly half the stage, which is already much smaller than most big opera houses, and: the direction that had all the male singers turned to face the audience and sing at full volume, when in principle they should to interacting with one another. Also their volume often drowned out the women who have beautiful parts to contribute. Perhaps the absence of nuance in the men's performance was the greatest loss. Overall, it was still a fine performance.
This is a picture of the 1st act scenery:
Our Thursday morning session with Oliver rehashed the performance. I was a little surprised that others also found objections to the same items I identified. Never content with a quick overview, Oliver decided to spend more time teaching us about "directorial choices", something none of us will ever have a reason to do!
Finally, we had a guest speaker who had been a bass player in the SFO orchestra for 41 years. He did a lot of demonstrating of the music we are going to encounter this evening at "Rigoletto" by Verdi. Although I have seen and heard this opera several times, I have yet to really embrace it, probably because it's Verdi. Pulling out certain things to listen for may be helpful. We shall see!
We had lunch at Pranzo, a favored Italian restaurant in downtown Santa Fe. I had eggplant parmesan because I'm giving my lower gums a break by not using my lower denture. The eggplant was really delicious! The restaurant was promoted as being one block from where the bus would drop us. As it turned out, it was more like three long blocks, with no shade and temps at 90+ degrees. Of course, that meant that there was also the return trip to the bus which then took us to Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum, located on Museum Hill, just off the Old Santa Fe Trail. It is a small museum and most of its contents reflect native arts in the Spanish colonial era. There is a very small section that shows contemporary works of current New Mexico artists. After an hour we returned
to our hotel in time a little rest before dinner and "Rigoletto" tonight.
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