Santa Fe Opera Review: High Notes of the Season

The 2022 roster includes the world premiere of ‘M. Butterfly,’ plus productions of ‘Falstaff,’ ‘Barber of Seville,’ ‘Carmen’ and ‘Tristan und Isolde’–the company’s first Wagner in over 30 years. 

Kangmin Justin Kim and Mark Stone

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

Aug. 9, 2022 5:34 pm

Santa Fe, N.M. 

This season’s Santa Fe Opera world premiere, “M. Butterfly” by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, is an absorbing new incarnation of Mr. Hwang’s 1988 hit play, which was drawn from the true story of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Chinese, female-presenting Peking Opera performer without, apparently, realizing that his lover was a man. The two were tried for espionage in 1986: The Chinese lover was a Communist government spy. 

The play was ahead of its time, examining Western assumptions about Asians through the lens of gender, and using Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” as a touchstone throughout. Today, gender fluidity and the orientalist constructs of “Madama Butterfly” are regular topics of discussion rather than shocking reveals. The “M. Butterfly” opera deploys them, through astute dramatic and musical choices, to investigate the political and emotional landscape of this story more deeply.

The diplomat, René Gallimard (baritone Mark Stone), tells the story through flashbacks from his French prison cell, still boasting of how he was able to enjoy the love of “a perfect woman.” He meets Song Liling (countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim) at an embassy party in Beijing in 1964 and is entranced by her singing of “Un bel di,” which reflects his fantasy of the submissive Asian and the virile westerner. That fantasy will persist throughout their relationship, even when his related geopolitical opinions—“Orientals will always submit to a greater force”—are proved wrong by events in Vietnam. 

Huang Ruo’s music slyly underlines the Frenchman’s point of view. There are hints of Puccini—a humming chorus, a snippet of the love scene. Sections focused on westerners have an insistent rhythmic edge as opposed to the gauzy, dreamy atmosphere of the scenes with Song. Brief clangs of Chinese percussion do warn us that there are other forces at work, as do the fervent People’s Liberation Army scenes. 

Yet the music, with its pervasive sense of ambiguity and instability, also asks us to wonder what Song is thinking, especially given Gallimard’s stiff, unromantic vocal persona. What slowly becomes clear is that Song, who is gay, an actor, and a member of the elite, has been forced to construct the character that Gallimard loves and spy on him in order to survive in a society that tolerates none of those things. Fans of John le Carré will relate. 

Mr. Kim, with his mellowly alluring sound, was extraordinarily adept at conveying artifice disguised as sincerity, even when he literally stripped naked. Mr. Stone’s performance as the pathetic dupe was courageously unsympathetic. Kevin Burdette, Hongni Wu and Joshua Dennis ably sang supporting roles; the chorus was lively as bored expatriates and Gallimard-mockers. Carolyn Kuan was the acute conductor. 

James Robinson’s precise staging clarified the complex web of time periods and motivations, aided by Christopher Akerlind’s pointed lighting. In set designer Allen Moyer’s mostly black-and-white palette, Song’s red boudoir—complete with divan, Chinese screen and fringed lamp—popped; so did Song’s colorful qipao and kimono, designed by James Schuette. Greg Emetaz created evocative scene-setting projections of cityscapes and Mao propaganda; Seán Curran’s choreography recalled “The Red Detachment of Women.” 

Santa Fe doesn’t usually do Wagner—just three productions of “The Flying Dutchman,” the last in 1988, in over six decades—so this season’s “Tristan und Isolde” was a major event. The orchestra, under the impassioned leadership of James Gaffigan, rose handsomely to the occasion. The show also provided a showcase for some impressive young Wagnerians—Tamara Wilson, a powerful Isolde with ringing top notes and whose tender “Liebestod” was worth the wait to the end of the evening; Jamie Barton, a playful Brangäne; and Nicholas Brownlee, a strong-voiced Kurwenal. Eric Owens brought gravitas and excellent diction to King Marke; Simon O’Neill’s harsh, steely tenor made for a very long Act 3, which is basically Tristan dying. 

The production took abstraction to boring extremes, with a set of geometric, mottled white walls (Charlap Hyman & Herrero), vaguely medieval costumes (Carlos J Soto), lighting that alternated between glaring white and stygian dark (John Torres), and pose-and-sing direction (Zack Winokur and Lisenka Heijboer Castañón). 

Quinn Kelsey

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

Verdi’s “Falstaff” fared better. The production by David McVicar (director and designer) was staged with just the right comic flair on a Globe Theatre-inspired wooden structure of balconies and staircases; the final masquerade scene was a hilarious riot of grotesques. Quinn Kelsey was a superb Falstaff: His booming baritone and outsize stage presence perfectly captured the fat knight’s humanity along with his outrageous pomposity. The rest of the competent cast did not reach his level, though Eric Ferring’s aria as Fenton showed off his bright tenor; Paul Daniel conducted with wit and pizzazz. 

Jack Swanson, Kyle Miller and the Santa Fe Opera Chorus

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

By contrast, Stephen Barlow’s antic production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” tried too hard for comedy. Expensive-looking elements included the set (a hollow, rotating head with a giant topiary mustache for Doctor Bartolo’s house), 15 chorus men in mariachi costumes to accompany Count Almaviva’s opening serenade, and six bullfighters getting haircuts in barber chairs to go with Figaro’s “Largo al factotum.” (Andrew D. Edwards was the designer.) Some of the anachronisms clashing with the mostly 18th-century costume design—such as Almaviva’s Mormon missionary disguise—were genuinely funny; others, like having Bartolo (Kevin Burdette) do a yoga routine in mid-aria, were distracting. The star of the show was Jack Swanson, whose ebullient tenor and imaginative vocal ornamentation made Almaviva enormously fun. As Rosina, Emily Fons’s best moment was the music lesson; conductor Iván López-Reynoso opted for speed rather than subtlety. 

Michael Fabiano and Isabel Leonard

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

Director Mariame Clément’s dark take on Bizet’s “Carmen” suggested that the eponymous heroine’s much-vaunted freedom is an illusion and, like all women, she exists at the mercy of men. Some of the ideas resonated: The cigarette women were caged behind a chain-link fence and ogled by the soldiers like animals in a zoo. Others felt incoherent: such as a child Carmen introduced into the action, miming how little girls are conditioned early to play their adult roles; and the elements of a broken-down amusement park—a carousel horse, curtained booths, and a skeleton-festooned haunted house that appeared for a few seconds before rotating out of sight. (Julia Hansen designed the sets and costumes.)

Stripped of her agency, Isabel Leonard’s Carmen seemed to be trying to disappear, though she sang the music well and even played the castanets skillfully during her Act 2 dance for her lover. This left the field wide open for Michael Fabiano, whose explosive Don José dominated the show. Even his “Flower Song,” gorgeously sung, with no hint of strain, felt of a piece with this characterization of a man whose confidence in his right to control a woman tips into insanity. Michael Sumuel brought easy power to Escamillo. Other pluses were the use of spoken French dialogue instead of recitative, which sharpens the story, and Harry Bicket’s sensitive conducting that took the orchestra beyond mere color and into commentary.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).