Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Richard Paul Fink Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Wozzeck returned to Santa Fe Opera on Saturday for the first time since 2001 for four performances under conductor David Robertson. Wozzeck is not an easy opera on any level, nor should it be. It’s about as far away from Menotti’s The Last Savage as you can get musically or thematically. The revival of Daniel Slater’s well-received production from the opera’s last run here is hugely successful and, a decade on, it still impresses particularly with the forces at hand. The staging doesn’t take a breath to pause between scenes and barrels toward its inevitable conclusion right from the start. (As a comparison, this is one of the major problems with Mark Lamos’ Metropolitan Opera production, which drops the curtain between every scene change in its brief 90 minutes ruining the rhythm of the work.) There is a real clarity of focus in Slater’s version on the relationship between Wozzeck and Marie, and her eventual murder comes as far more of a shock than one might expect. The production also underlines Wozzeck’s own decline into madness with a progressive misalignment of the set, with different slices of it tilting in either direction as the night wears on. The fool, a small role in Act II, is greatly expanded in terms of stage time in order to provide Wozzeck with a haunting death-like character pointing the way to his inevitable end. The fool’s painted facial death mask soon spreads to the other patrons of the bar by Act III further accenting the doom in the air. And if all of this wasn’t great enough, the New Mexico skies opened up with one of their famous lightning flashes right before Marie’s first appearance in one of those moments that makes Santa Fe Opera unlike any other opera-going experience in the world.

Nicola Beller Carbone Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Musically and vocally the show has much to recommend it. The cast includes two of the world’s foremost Alberichs: Eric Owens as the doctor and Richard Paul Fink as Wozzeck. Both have large, well-controlled instruments that came across beautifully in the outdoor theater. Fink is a superb Wozzeck who is able to project a nebbishy desperation for his character who seems more confused than angry about his actions both before, during, and after Marie’s murder. Robert Brubaker was a mocking, cruel captain. I’m particularly fond of tenor Stuart Skelton’s Drum Major as well. Skelton, who has performed this role at the Met Opera, is great as the lascivious john who seduces Marie. Skelton will be performing Parsifal in Seattle according to bio material in the Santa Fe program, which should be something to look forward to. (The program also notes that Paul Groves will be singing the same role in Chicago in future seasons for what it’s worth.) The cast is rounded out by Nicola Beller Carbone as Marie. She has sufficient power and an easy clarity over the dense orchestration and brings out Marie’s highly conflicted character. She could turn the slightest bit shrill at the top end, but this was formidable by any measure.

Robert Brubaker and Eric Owens Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

This performance was also the local debut of St. Louis Symphony Music Director and Southern California native David Robertson. He took an approach reminiscent in my mind to the performances given by the Vienna Philharmonic in Berg’s Lulu at last year’s Salzburg Festival. Robertson brought out surprisingly lush Romantic underpinnings to a work one rarely associates with them. There is a tradeoff here in terms of lyricism over a more jarring, percussive sound. I sometimes felt I had lost the strings in the mix over the horns and winds as well. But the coordination between stage and pit was solid.

And so, an excellent and disturbing Wozzeck concludes the opening part of the 2011 Santa Fe Opera season. Of course, starting Monday, things kick into high gear with 6 performances a week until the end of August. There are a number of great shows to see this year, but with only three more performances of Wozzeck plan your time carefully, before it is gone.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 11

Anna Christy Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

The standard opera repertoire is filled with works that overcame bad starts. Works that were considered horrific flops would sometimes go into hibernation for long periods only to be revived decades later to great acclaim and popularity. Unfortunately Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Last Savage isn’t likely to become one of them. There is a window of opportunity for such an event right now. Santa Fe Opera opened a new production of Menotti’s notorious, early-60s flop last week and, true to form, they gave it everything they’ve got. Of course, that was also the story in 1964 when the Metropolitan Opera premiered the recently completed work in the U.S. with a starry cast that included Nicolai Gedda, Roberta Peters, and George London. The Last Savage was savaged then in the press as it had been in its Paris premiere just months before. Outside of only a handful of appearances since then, the opera has largely been put aside. But when Santa Fe Opera and its director Charles MacKay went looking for an English-language comedy to round out the 2011 season, a chance to revive this piece seemed like just the ticket.

Anna Christy and Daniel Okulitch Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

And they almost get away with it. It’s a wonderful production directed by Ned Canty that visually recreates the heady early 1960s. The Last Savage focuses on Kitty, a Vassar student who has come to a make-believe part of India to capture and study the last known savage human living in the wild. Her father and the local Maharajah are more intent on arranging her marriage to the Maharajah’s son, but she won’t have it until achieving her goal. A plot is hatched by the parents to pay a country bumpkin, Abdul, to pretend to be the fabled savage who Kitty subsequently captures and takes back to Chicago to train him in the ways of the world. Canty keeps the visual humor of these scenes percolating along. The show is colorful and sharp with plenty of comic activity. The Act II cocktail party, which alienates Abdul from the ways of the West, is particularly pleasing with its neon-lit Chicago sign and parodies about modern art, science, and religion.

Anna Christy and cast of The Last Savage Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

The cast is excellent as well. Anna Christy is Kitty and manages the gymnastics of the opera’s most challenging vocal part with ease. Daniel Okulitch is a robust and funny Abdul. Okulitch is once again costumed without a shirt more often than not, which enjoyable as it is to watch, makes me worry that audiences don’t take his formidable vocal ability as seriously as they should. He's got a lovely baritone and excels in so many roles, particularly those of Mozart. The supporting roles were all well done, including Jamie Barton’s Maharanee, Sean Panikkar as Kodanda, the Maharajah’s son, and Kevin Burdette as Mr. Scattergood, Kitty’s father. One couldn’t have asked for more from the pit, which featured the orchestra under George Manahan who has few rivals in leading this sort of American material.

Anna Christy and Daniel Okulitch Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

But with all of this TLC and despite some genuine smiles, The Last Savage can’t escape Menotti’s bland score. On the one hand it is often outright melodic and accessible, but it isn’t particularly memorable most of the time either. This is supposedly the kind of music that audiences were crying out for in the early 60s, as they were alienated by the academic trends in composition lauded by music critics who were not kind to Menotti's more conservative approach. But not being modern wasn’t enough to guarantee an audience for this particular opera then or now. There is a septet close to the end of Act III that comes closest to providing something musically interesting, and feels Mozartean in the way it stands out in a work that contains almost no ensemble moments and little chorus work. The vocal writing seems uncertain at times as well. There are a few coloratura flourishes for Kitty, but much of the libretto doesn’t beg to be sung. As for the libretto itself, the story line is clever enough and solidly moves along. But this sort of early-60s comedy about modern romance and the changing role of the sexes does seem dated. Imagine an operatic treatment of a much stronger story, Pillow Talk, and you’ll get the idea. Except without Rock Hudson. Or Thelma Ritter. One can’t fault Santa Fe Opera for not putting its best foot forward, though. Menotti’s The Last Savage has a history of artists giving it the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes, love is not enough. The opera runs through August 25.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 11

Meredith Arwady, Paul Groves and Yuri Minenko Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Following a recent performance in Ojai with Dawn Upshaw singing George Crumb in a semi-staged production directed by Peter Sellars, a friend of mine commented that while he’d enjoyed the evening overall, he was tired of “the whole Peter Sellars thing.” I believe what he was referring to mostly was the director’s tendency to infuse everything he does with direct references to contemporary social and political issues and his boundless exuberance, which opera-goers in the U.S. have become familiar with over his long career. But I felt this summary judgment unfair at the time, and even more so after seeing the new production of Vivaldi’s Griselda which opened at the Santa Fe Opera on Saturday. Taken together with his recent production of Handel’s Hercules at the Lyric Opera of Chicago last spring, Sellars’ work is anything but static and is evolving in new directions. Now, two events don’t make a trend, and the concern for contemporary social issues are still a big part of what is going on. But Griselda, like Hercules, has a surprisingly sparse look and feeling to it, focusing almost exclusively on the interpersonal interaction between the vocalists at the expense of everything else. Furthermore, strong painterly visual elements dominate both recent shows suggesting a greater abstraction of time and place than say projects like Doctor Atomic. Sellars’ Griselda uses no scenery or props other than three guns, two chairs and the giant single wall that makes up the set surrounding the vocalists. If this year is a guide, Sellars is streamlining his productions to the barest elements, leaving his performers completely exposed amid a visual world that is less diorama and more abstract art. It is a move that deconstructs an overdetermined work of art, opening it up to greater numbers of audience interpretations. But, it can also run the risk of getting dull if the visual artistic elements are not as strong as the musical and acting elements in the production.

Isabel Leonard as Costanza Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Luckily, Santa Fe’s new Griselda is as visually striking and theatrically engaging as anything I’ve seen this year. It is by no means a stand-and-deliver production despite its simplicity and it is blessed with a set painted by fellow L.A.-based artist Gronk that could fill an evening of viewing in its own right. Gronk has collaborated with Sellars before, most notably in 2005 in Santa Fe with Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar. His abstract painting covers all sides of the stage in intense colors –red, white, and black- but mostly, and above all else, endless shades of green. The stage floor is also painted green and it radiates most of the evening under James F. Ingalls glorious lighting, which causes the massive painting to repeatedly express new colors and forms in conjunction with the performances. Often it is more the painting than the actual vocalists that is directly lit while performers sing in the shadows during moments that make dramatic sense for them to do so. The cast is similarly dressed in colorful, contemporary outfits from Dunya Ramicova including Gaultiero’s polo gear, Corrado’s lime green suit and Costanza’s white and pink quinceañera dress. Griselda’s hapless suitor Ottone appears in street clothes Ramicova stated were influenced by the early look of pop music act Usher.

The cast of Griselda Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

The abstract visual elements of the production provide an interesting parallel for the dramatic and theatrical elements of the opera, which are similarly complicated, evocative and open to multiple conflicting interpretations. Griselda is not the kind of story contemporary audiences are accustomed to. It’s most famous instance occurs as the final story in Giovanni Boccaccio’s 12th-Century Decameron, although it also appears as “The Clerk’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. (It even appears in Petrarch as well.) The story was immensely popular well into the 18th Century and by the time Vivaldi and his youthful playwright collaborator Carlo Goldoni got their hands on Apostolo Zeno‘s 1701 libretto in the 1730s, the story had already been set for the operatic stage many times, most notably by Alessandro Scarlatti. In Vivaldi's opera Griselda is the wife of Gaultiero, King of Thessaly. She was born poor and Gaultiero’s reputation among his people has suffered for having chosen a wife of such low origins. He elects to test Griselda’s honor and faith in him by putting her through a series of increasingly unbelievable humiliations that include divorcing her, banishing her (and her son separately) from his palace, and claiming to have murdered their daughter to avoid further dissatisfaction among the populace. The list goes on and the opera can be a grueling testament to Griselda’s suffering as Gaultiero brings their daughter Costanza, whose origins are unknown to anyone except him and his servant Corrado, out of hiding and announces his plans to marry her. However, Griselda’s faith and love in Gaultiero are never shaken and she refuses to act or even speak out against him, accepting each increasingly horrific dictum with resolution until Gaultiero proves to his people her worthiness through her boundless deference and restores her to her husband, throne and children.

Amanda Majeski as Ottone Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Needless to say, it’s a story that is problematic, but Sellars, like others before him, invites the audience to see Griselda as a more complicated figure. Griselda’s endurance and fortitude against a world of injustice create a psychological power for her in their own right, her self-denial becomes a source of strength in this argument. She refuses to despair or abandon what she truly believes despite what is going on around her. This notion of transcendence through suffering has Catholic overtones and Sellars puts a point on this by suggesting in his own notes that Griselda may represent a female Christ figure. He musically underscores this with a canny change to the musical score. Vivaldi cast his probable mistress Anna Giró in the title role for the opera's premiere and while she may have had many positive attributes, singing was not one of them. All of Griselda’s arias were therefore written in an aria parlante form being a little bit closer to recitative than air and leaving Santa Fe’s formidable Griselda, Meredith Arwady, with some of the evening’s most unattractive music. So in an act of musical and theatrical redemption, Griselda’s final aria is replaced with the first aria from Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater. Sellars’ Griselda closes her vocal performance with a reflection on Mary and her suffering at the foot of the cross. It is a touching moment and works well in the opera, although Sellars take on Grisedla’s story is certainly not the definitive or only one.

Meredith Arwady and Paul Groves Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Griselda is unusual in other ways as well and stands out even for lovers of Baroque music. Vivaldi was in his 60s when he set Goldoni’s revision of the libretto and decided to go along with the younger man’s forward thinking for the time about musical drama. Goldoni cut nearly half of the arias from Zeno’s original libretto and added recitative, creating a work that has unusually large amounts of what most contemporary audiences would see as filler in a Baroque opera. There are lengthy passages of recitative that both begin and end the performance, and the emphasis in the revision was on theatrical values. The end effect is a performance where the vocalists have a lot of acting to do outside of their actual singing and they uniformly succeed at it. Vivaldi’s music tends to be more straight-forward harmonically than one might think of from Handel or other Baroque composers. But there was still plenty of wonderful music to be sung, and Santa Fe has brought together a wonderful cast.

Besides Arwady’s dark contralto which dominates the stage if not the whole opera, there were superb performances from nearly everyone in the cast. Isabel Leonard sang Costanza’s big aria “Agitata da due venti” with remarkable technical skill and excellent volume and control. She clearly distinguished herself musically from everyone around her in an ensemble cast with its share of heavy hitters. She shared the biggest ovations of the evening with Amanda Majeski who sang Ottone, Griselda's unusually threatening other suitor, with a beautiful lyrical ease. There were excellent countertenors galore. Yuri Minenko sang Gaultiero’s henchman Corrado with a bright and shining tone. David Daniels, cast as Costanza’s love Roberto was announced as ill, replaced on opening night with a very young and handsome Jason Abrams who availed himself spectacularly given the short notice of going on. Perhaps the only vocally under-performing member of the cast was Paul Groves’ Gaultiero who sometimes sounded unsteady though never pitchy. This sort of Baroque performance is not Groves’ typical rep, but he made a good go of it and was completely committed to a very mean spirited role. All of this was conducted by another L.A. artist, Grant Gershon in his Santa Fe Opera premiere. Gershon’s star continues to rise and he gave a fleet, careful turn through the score with a contemporary orchestral approach. It's exciting to see his face show up increasingly on other podiums around the country.

As a lover of Baroque opera, I found it a hugely successful evening with a thoughtful and visually exciting approach to the material. And while the interpretation may not please everyone or resolve all the conflicts in the way some people like, it is a production that takes a stand, has a point of view, and runs with it. It is not a museum piece despite its age, and any opera company that produces that kind of work is doing the right thing. And any show that is as visually pretty as it is acoustically deserves to be seen. Sellars' take on Vivaldi's Griselda will be onstage in Santa Fe through August 19.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 11

Bryan Hymel and Ailyn Pérez Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

The currently unfashionable Faust made its way to the stage at Santa Fe Opera for the first time this season. I say unfashionable because I've found an unusual number of opera lovers have a disdain for this once most popular of operas. This may stem from the fact that even though Gounod’s once omnipresent masterpiece still shows up regularly on opera stages, it is often mistreated with less than imaginative productions and sometimes B-list cast and conductors. Often unintentionally, opera companies approach Faust like more of a chore than a hot ticket and I think audiences pick up on that. So it is refreshing to see Santa Fe take this opera seriously, making it one of the cornerstone productions of its 2011 festival season in a new production by Stephen Lawless conducted by the festival’s Chief Conductor, Frédéric Chaslin. Santa Fe has had long-standing relationships with the works of Strauss, Mozart, and Puccini. Verdi is no stranger here and new music and world premieres are a regular occurrence. Yet with the exception of Carmen and some popular Offenbach revivals, the company has comparatively little track record with the French repertoire. But with the appointment of Chaslin, this is hopefully about to change, and as this run of Faust demonstrates, he has a lot to offer in this arena.

Act V of Faust Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Chaslin and the orchestra gave one of the most musically satisfying performances of the score I’ve yet heard live. His loving attention to dynamic contrasts were clear with a slow, thoughtful, and luxurious introduction to Act I. The remarkable detail could be seen later as well with chorus numbers and marches that were light and full of movement. This opera bogs down easily in lesser hands and oom-pah-pah lurks around every corner. Chaslin and the company have also preserved Gounod’s beautiful ballet music from Act V, which is regularly axed for time by most companies these days. With this kind of care, Santa Fe could bring about a new renaissance for French opera here in the U.S. and 2012’s planned production of Les Pecheurs de Perles is looking increasingly promising following this Faust.

Ailyn Pérez Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Chaslin’s collaborator, Lawless, has created a rather dark and sometimes strange if not always creepy version of Faust’s world. With the exception of Marguerite, and an occasional dancer, the cast is entirely dressed in black throughout. The late-Victorian look of the costumes and props stands in contrast to rows of lights and the otherwise blank shiny walls and floors of the set. There is a preoccupation with giant display cases that characters are often wheeled in on as if dioramas at The American Museum of Natural History. Marguerite’s jewel box in Act III is one such case marked “Bijouterie” with a counter and display stands with jewelry. In the Act IV church scene, a display case serves as a confessional for Méphistolphélès where he reaches through the partition and steals away Marguerite’s bastard child. Lawless can produce some great visual moments including a coffin that Faust and later Marguerite inscribe their names upon. Perhaps the most fascinating moment for me was the reinstated ballet where the women who’ve come to tempt Faust in an orgiastic dance are represented with the most famous femme fatales of opera—Carmen, Cleopatra, Manon, Dalila, Salome, and Helen of Troy—who enter in their own labeled display cases. They take turns seducing Faust who resists when the back wall parts to reveal the image of Marguerite, alone on a chair, awaiting the noose for a planned suicide. But as much as I enjoyed Lawless's visual sense of the work, there were times that dragged and some of the interpersonal chemistry between Faust, Marguerite, and Méphistolphélès was lacking in key moments.

Mark S. Doss and Bryan Hymel Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Of course, some of that could arguably be due to the cast itself, who were overall more vocally than dramatically assured. Marguerite was sung by Ailyn Pérez, who has been singing this role everywhere lately. She has a lovely and powerful voice, and her performance in the role has grown since seeing her in San Diego earlier this year. Her mad scenes were truly distraught. I find her vocally a bit darkly-hued for the part overall and the top notes do get pressured at times. But she looks the part and often sounds quite lovely. She was adequately matched with Bryan Hymel’s Faust. The young American tenor gave an athletic vocal performance with a pleasing top voice. He could get lost in the lower part of the range, but it was a solid, respectable performance. Mark S. Doss sang Méphistolphélès. He had quite a bit to do here and wields hyperdermic syringes throughout as instruments of his magical powers. This is a Satan who is as much demented surgeon as warlock, and Doss went for it physically. I found his bass rather muddy most of the evening, but he got the job done. The chorus sounded strong and I was especially appreciative that Lawless found a way to actually keep them on stage at all times when they were singing, which helped musically.

Even with a well-done Faust like this one, the opera will probably still not be for everyone. But what opera is? The good news is Santa Fe continues to maintain its high standards and is giving the kind of musical attention to this and hopefully other French operas that may make the number of people who think they dislike French opera much, much smaller. The show is on hiatus for two weeks, but will return on Aug 1 and run throughout the entire coming month.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 11

The Santa Fe Opera will open a new production of Vivaldi’s Griselda this weekend. An operatic rarity, the work is mostly known today by a handful of arias popular on the concert stage. Perhaps the best known of these is “Agitata da due venti” a coloratura showpiece popular with those vocalists who’ve got the chops to manage its quick pace, trills, and elaborate detail. In perhaps the first of a recurring series, above and below are two prime examples of the work in performance – Cecilia Bartoli (above) and Vivica Genaux below. The question at hand: Who sang it better?

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 11, Who Sang It Better

Bryn Hymel and Mark S. Doss Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

Although it may be cheating to say so, Santa Fe has one of the most beautiful opera houses anywhere. The cheating part is that it is not the building itself that provides the beauty. The people of Santa Fe know there is no competing with the beauty of their surroundings, and so the opera house itself is completely open on three sides, including the back of the stage, to the vistas around it providing for some of the most dramatic viewing in a theater anywhere. If you’re an opera fan and haven’t been to Santa Fe during one of their summer festival seasons, you’re missing one of the great joys of loving opera itself. The Santa Fe Opera season, which opened over the past weekend, is a prime example of the variety and excitement the company brings each summer to northern New Mexico. The season will run through the end of August and features performances of five different productions. 2011 is the second year for the company’s Chief Conductor, Frédéric Chaslin, (his third year of performances in Santa Fe), and he and General Director, Charles MacKay, have put together a typically varied and adventurous program I’ll be covering over two weekends in July. In the meantime you can check out the Santa Fe Opera site, which now includes an in-house blog, The Back Deck, that’s worth a look.

The Santa Fe Opera House

First off, any season that includes a Berg opera is on the right track, and Santa Fe is presenting Wozzeck this summer under the baton of conductor David Robertson. The new production, which opens on July 30, is directed by Daniel Slater and features the highly regarded Richard Paul Fink in the title role. He’ll be joined by Nicola Beller Carbone as Marie as well as Robert Brubaker, Eric Owens, and Stuart Skelton. On the complete opposite end of the musical spectrum is the other major highlight of this year’s season, a new production of Vivaldi’s Griselda. Vivaldi devoted much of his career to opera, although the works are little performed today. Santa Fe has ventured into this territory with director Peter Sellars and LA. based designer Gronk who teamed up for the company’s 2005 production of Golijov’s Ainadamar. There’s another L.A. connection with conductor Grant Gershon on the podium who’ll be joined by a starry cast including Paul Groves, David Daniels, Isabel Leonard, and Meredith Arwady in the title role. The run starts on July 16 and it promises to be anything but boring.

David Lomeli and Ana Maria Martinez Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2011

The season is rounded out with popular favorites and a curiosity. Chaslin will lead a new production of Gounod’s Faust starring Ailyn Pérez and Bryan Hymel with Mark S. Doss as Méphistophélès in a Stephen Lawless production. The other staple is Puccini’s La Bohème starring Ana Maria Martinez and David Lomeli as the tragic lovers in a revival of Paul Curran’s popular staging. Both Bohème and Faust opened last weekend and will run throughout the next two months. The curiosity in the season is Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Last Savage, a parody of 1960s suburbia starring Anna Christy and Daniel Okulitch under the baton of George Manahan. The Last Savage, which premiered in 1963, was critically panned both in Paris and New York where it received a lavish staging at the Met Opera. It’s conventional lyricism and musicality was viewed as unfashionable then and the work lay dormant except for two productions, one in Hawaii in the 1970s and another at the Spoletto Festival in 1981. However, Santa Fe is known for making gold of exactly this kind of American operatic straw and all will be revealed on opening night, July 23.

The Calder Quartet

Of course, Santa Fe is more than a one trick pony even when it comes to music and mid-July will also welcome this year’s Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in its 39th season now under Artistic Director, Marc Neikrug. As usual the festival will offer a huge variety of programs this year, ranging with music from the Baroque up to premieres of new commissions. The list of visiting artists is again filled with some of the most exciting names in classical music with a roster this season that includes Dawn Upshaw, the Calder Quartet, Joyce Yang, Daniel Hope, Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish, Inon Bartanan, and the L.A. Philharmonic’s own principal cellist Peter Stumpf. There’s so much music to choose from, but I’m most looking forward to hearing Upshaw perform Lieder from Robert and Clara Schumann and the Calder Quartet’s local premiere of Christopher Rouse’s String Quartet No 3, commissioned especially for them. Check out the SFCMF schedule and be sure to take advantage of the other Santa Fe summer music institution while you’re in town.

Labels: Santa Fe Chamber Music, Santa Fe Opera 11