Opera Chic was recently listening to L'Europa Riconosciuta, Salieri's totally cool work that was exhumed by Riccardo Muti for the re-opening of la Scala four years ago (that opera had been the one that inaugurated the august theater for the first time so it was only fair that it was performed again to celebrate the re-opening after extensive renovation) and she was thinking about the usual question of blockbusters vs obscure, interesting choices -- one of Opera Chic's fave rhetorical questions is, actually, 'Just How Many Boheme Can You Possibly Listen To, Man'.
The answer, of course, is usually 'not many'. Because, seriously, being the most popular and most widely performed work of musical theater in the world carries a big burden with itself -- in a word, one is all like, b0ring! neXt!
But Opera Chic really wanted to check out the Santa Fe Opera, that jewel of a open-air hall that sits in the New Mexico desert overlooking, of all places, Los Alamos (insert lame jokes about the opera being da bomb here). And La Boheme sounded good anyway -- a young cast, a young Italian conductor, and it was our appetizer anyway waiting for tonight's big exotic cuisine meal, Tan Dun's American premiere of Tea.
So, quickly because Opera Chic has now to get ready for her second big night in a row at the SFO: decked out (to fight the chill of the Monsoon-beaten Santa Fe summah) in a Calypso vanilla T-shirt, two layers of cashmere (again Calypso -- yeah there was a sale both at the NYC and LA boutiques k so what -- and Lucien Pellat-Finet), Adriano Goldschmied gray jeans and Miu Miu pumps, Opera Chic braved the weather and immediately drank a big cup of hawt coffee at the adorable little bar situated on the lateral balcony of the opera house.
The stage is impressively small for a hall with a 2,000 capacity and there is no curtain, so scene changes require some speed and skill. The conductor Corrado Rovaris (music director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia) was mercifully in perfect white tie attire (o how we hate conductors in black pjs, charcoal T-shirts, Catholic priest robes, anything but the old beautiful classic frac), so thanks for that maestro. Rovaris elicited a fine dark sound from the orchestra, the only possible choice with the sustained pace he chose. And kudos to Paul Curran, the director who set the action at the end of WWI -- talk about the dreams of youth being shattered -- and avoided the usual pitfalls of horrible slapstick Jerry Lewis-style action at the beginning of Acts I and IV, and directed with clarity the usually tricky Cafe Momus scene.
Jennifer Black (in the photo above, courtesy of Ken Howard / Santa Fe Opera) was a sweetly melancholy Mimì, without a huge voice but blessed with beautiful expression and carefully tuned warmth (a Mimi who hits her notes and saves us the schmaltz is a fine Mimi by us after all we have endured in the past with this role thx), Rodolfo was given by Dimitri Pittas -- o how we liked him! -- a powerful voice with the authority of a much experienced singer and very deeply felt acting; James Westman was a heartfelt, agile Marcello. All those three roles will be performed throughout the Santa Fe Opera festival by six singers; but playing Musetta throughout will be only Nicole Cabell (in the top photo, right below the post title, courtesy of Ken Howard / Santa Fe Opera). We expected a lot from the winner of the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition but, besides a cool fierceness in her acting -- oh those glares! -- we are sad to report that the voice, we are sure because of fatigue, was close to inaudible at times -- and poor Rovaris couldn't really tone down the orchestra down enough to help her. But all in all, Opera Chic is happy to report that she really enjoyed this usually disappointing, too popular for its own good work by our Milan neighbor Giacomo Puccini.