At Santa Fe Opera, Extreme Weather Is Part of the Show

SANTA FE, N.M. — What unifies the deeply dissimilar operas playing this year at Santa Fe Opera? In a word, the wind — a fixture in the librettos, as well as in the weather.

Open on the sides and perched on a hill here, the company’s theater lets in the elements in a way that makes you hear classic passages in sometimes unexpected ways. In Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” on Friday, the sublimely serene first-act trio, “Soave sia il vento” (“May the wind be gentle”), couldn’t calm a pummeling downpour or gusts strong enough to waft rain onto the audience.

On Wednesday, booming desert thunder seemed written into the tense score of Janacek’s “Jenufa”; the draft that throws open a window at the frantic close of Act II might well have been real. “The icy hand of death,” the agonized Kostelnicka calls it, “tearing at my heart.”

It’s much the same for a character in Poul Ruders’s “The Thirteenth Child,” which had its premiere here on Saturday: “The wind,” he sings, “shrieks and rips my soul.”

Source: The New York Times

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Santa Fe Opera • Santa Fe, New Mexico • Santa Fe Opera • Wind • Weather • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Così fan tutte • Soave • Sia Furler • Rain • Wind • Rain • Leoš Janáček • Jenůfa • Hand of Death (1949 film) • Poul Ruders • Soul •