By PHK
Photo credits © 2007 Ken Howard. Photos courtesy of the Santa Fe Opera 2007
In Richard Strauss’ Daphne, the Greek god Apollo concludes the opera by turning the nymph Daphne into a bay-laurel tree in accordance with her wishes to be with the trees and the flowers. Jean-Philippe Rimeau’s Platée is all about Roman gods playing tricks on earthly creatures. It features a warts-and-all-frog named Platée who the gods induce to fall in love with the Roman god Jupiter and vice versa.
The American premier of the opera Tea: A Mirror of Soul by the Chinese composer Tan Dun of “Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons” fame is bathed in elegant tea green – as one might expect - although 
the opera’s press photos missed the dominant green entirely and it’s verboten to take photographs in the opera house – even before the performance begins – so I can’t show you what I mean. Even in Mozart’s old standby Così fan Tutte – which I did not see this time but friends did – women dressed in green 
are in the opera’s opening scenes.
Bohème in earthtones
Only La Bohème features various shades of earth tone browns – but even in this beloved Puccini opera, Act II is set in the Parisian café Momus, a haunt of poor intellectuals. The café is named after Momus, the Roman god of literature and satire, who assumes a much more significant role in the comic opera Platée in which Momus has a great time playing himself.
If you haven’t seen a break-dancing frog, may I suggest you run, not walk to Platéee’s final 
performance on August 22 at the Santa Fe Opera. The froggy break-dancer is worth the price of admission alone – and the whole production is a stitch – although without such creative directors, choreographers and costume designers who set this mid-18th century, melodic play-within-a-play in modern dress, it could have easily been a deadly two and one-half hour bore.
My friends thought Tea was fantastic – and we did agree on the creativeness of the costumes, stage design and percussive effects – particularly the inventive use of water as percussion and the inspired play of lights on the trio of on-stage musicians and their novel instruments. I, however, was less than enthralled with the plot and not entranced by most of the singing. The issue was not quality of voices or performers - it’s that I find listening to music that slides between notes, includes quarter tones and other elements derived from the Chinese musical genre grating after a while. And contrary to one of the reviews I read about the inherent musicality of the score, I found nothing even to contemplate whistling after departing the hall.
In contrast, I was pleasantly surprised by Daphne – but conversely a friend was not. I’m not generally a Strauss devoté and I usually prefer the modern Greeks to the classical experience. I’ll take composers Hadjidakis, Theodorakis, even Skolkotas on the musical front and novelist Nikos Kazanztakis or poet George Seferis to the legends and antics of the Olympians.
But never mind, Strauss’s minimalist Daphne held a certain attraction. And for the most part the score was melodic setting it on the verge, as Strauss is, between the 19th and 20th centuries. I think I detected even a passing refrain found in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess – an orchestral version I had just heard the week before at a Santa Fe Symphony concert downtown. Meanwhile back at the opera, Daphne’s haunting theme was performed by the oboe. This, after all, is only fitting for a nymph who turns into a tree since the word for oboe in French is hautbois, or high wood.
I’ve been attending performances of the Santa Fe Opera for the past several years – almost since I moved to New Mexico nine years ago and the opera began performing in a much improved, completely redesigned house.
Last year, the dominant color was red from the Magic Flute t-shirts worn by performers and on sale at the Opera Shop to the production of Carmen in which a sultry Sophie Van Mutter starred. This year the earth tones captured sales counter and stage.
Cross-cutting themes
This season, however, was also the first where I noticed cross-cutting thematic ideas that linked several operas to each other if only tenuously. Maybe such thematic relationships were there in the past – and I missed them. Or maybe I was so struck by the wearing of the greens this year that I started looking for other less visually striking cross-cutting connections – like Greek and Roman mythology that form the underpinning of Daphne and Platée – as well as provide a nice touch to La Bohème. These connections were pointed out in the voluminous program which also included abbreviated descriptions of the gods.
La Bohème was distinctly realistic as the program notes promised. Out with the traditionally, swelte, glamourous Mimí dying a thousand deaths of consumption center stage on a heavily upholstered period piece chaise lounge. In with a larger, frumpy Mimí dressed in nondescript brown collapsing in a ratty garden chair sans foot rest. I’m not sure that Jennifer Black, who starred as Mimí in July would have played the role along the lines Serena Farnocchia did in August but Farnocchia did not match the projection or voice of her stage partner Dmitri Pittas. In retrospect, I would have liked to have heard Black perform in Santa Fe in July but I would not have wanted to miss tenor Pittas who played the starving poet Rodolfo and Mimí’s unrequited love. The August night I saw him, he stole the show both dramatically and vocally.
Classical music for everyone
For a second year in a row, one opera – in this case La Bohème - was simulcast on huge screen at a park in Santa Fe where people came with picnic dinners and sat on blankets to enjoy the free show. Funding was made available too this year for another simulcast in downtown Albuquerque. Both telecasts - I'm told - were very well attended: that’s all to the good.
Maybe this just goes to show that classical music is far from dead despite the dearth of music education in American public schools – it just needs to be affordable, available and listenable. I’ll bet Porgy and Bess too would have attracted music in the park crowds. Another time?
Photo identification and credits: Left side: 1) Erin Wall as Daphne - Ken Howard ©2007; 2) Roger Honeywell as the Prince in Tea - Ken Howard ©2007 ; 3) Garret Scene in La Boheme - Ken Howard ©2007; Right side: 4) Susanna Philips as Fiordiligi, Susanne Mentzer as Despina and Katharine Goeldner as Dorabella in Cosi fan Tutte - Ken Howard ©2007; 5) Frog break-dancer in Platee - Ken Howard ©2007. Photos courtesy of the Santa Fe Opera.
2007 Santa Fe Opera Review "Tasty brew with a dash of hokum," Financial Times, August 22, 2007
2007 Santa Fe Opera Reviews of Daphne:
Dallas News
Albuquerque Journal
Santa Fe New Mexican
Reviews of Daphne, La Boheme, Cosi fan Tutte and Platee by Charles Downey.
Ionarts - "Ionarts in Santa Fe" (Reviews by musicologist and blogger Charles Downey of Daphne, La Boheme, Cosi fan Tutte and Platee.