Bard, Britten, Britain, Combined
SANTA FE, NM—Another brave start to live, in-person performances, where apart from your required masks, you can pretend there’s no pandemic any more.
After the 2020 shutdown, the Santa Fe Opera (summer) Festival has resumed with a near-full complement of four operas, playing in the semi-outdoor Crosby Theatre with its spectacular views of the high desert and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This is arguably the most breath-taking site for opera in America, with open side vistas and yet a solid roof overhead.
This year Benjamin Britten’s very English 1960 “Midsummer Night’s Dream” after Shakespeare, is reaping plaudits. The deft but methodical score is brought to life by the wacky, farcical, updated setting of Netia Jones—stage director, scenic and costume designer, creator of the mobile Rohrschach- like projections, and maybe even the architect of those crashing thunderstorms on high. The so-called “Athenians” are mostly in urbane attire of nearly a century ago, with the (halfway-dressed) cutups’ apparel inspired by English variety shows of the earlier 20th century, boaters and all. The work is further enlivened by a dozen will-o-the-wisp underground dancers/fairies in luminous costumes, as choreographed by Reed Luplau. They cavort, they flash, they creep, they even shadow the singers’ moves, conjuring up a never-never fantasy world of imaginary nocturnal beings. The real world was never quite so much fun.
Britten’s musical style is neoclassical and consonant, with a touch even lighter than Mendelssohn’s famous score of the same name, coming back again and again with ear-catching intermezzi as well as aphoristic vocal ensembles. He creates sounds in the night that defy characterization as every-day instrumentals. If the overall comedy is not as tightly focused as in pre-1840 comic opera, ascribe it to heaping inclusions of Shakespeare’s lines over the span of three-plus hours, including Puck’s unforgettable “What fools these mortals be.”
The split-level story, really a fairy tale, vacillates between high art and low-brow comic characters, at its lowest when the drugged Queen Tytania takes on suggestive positions with Bottom, the slothful man turned into a donkey. This leads to couplets like
“Methought I was enamored of an ass. How did this ever come to pass?”
The complex tale requires 19 solo singers and assorted others. In a nutshell, a spat leads to dispensing a love potion (floral drug) with the result of scrambling up the love lives of at least three devoted couples, with the flashing, acrobatic Puck (Luplau again, in a curious speaking role—rare in opera) as the go-between.
The scene-stealer is the slow-evolving low-brow actor Bottom (bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee) who is turned into the mulish passive figure, almost inert even in the love-making of the gorgeous, irresistible Tytania played by the stunning coloratura Erin Morley, clearly the vocal Venus of this show with her stratospheric high notes, spot on.
Whatever the plaudits for the Britten orchestra, a measure goes to SFO’s music Director since 2018, Harry Bicket, on the pit podium.
Other singers of note in the effective cast were countertenor Iestyn Davies (Oberon), baritone Luke Sutliff (as Demetrius) and tenor Brenton Ryan as Flute. The latter brought down the house when, in the play-within-the-play, he emerged in a bright red strapless formal gown playing a female role and all but chewing up the scenery.
Yes, there is life in Santa Fe. On several levels, in fact!
Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” after Shakespeare, heard Aug. 4. Crosby Theatre, Santa Fe, NM. Season ends Aug. 27. For info, call (505) 986-5908 or go online: www.santafeopera.org.
