MOUNTAIN- SIDE CHATS

Cold Mountain opens at Santa Fe Opera on Saturday, Aug. 1. A three-day affiliated symposium, “Echoes of Cold Mountain,” takes place at the New Mexico History Museum from Friday, July 31, through Sunday, Aug. 2. The opening address, “The Cinematic Civil War: How Films have Shaped Popular Understanding of the Great American Trauma,” is presented by Gary Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, at 10:30 a.m. At 1 p.m. on Friday there is a round-table discussion about adapting history, moderated by historian and scholar Estevan Rael-Galvez. Panelists are Kirk Ellis, writer and co-executive producer of the HBO miniseries

John Adams, Prof. Paul Hutton from the University of New Mexico history department, who formerly served as executive director of the Western History Association, and Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder and

Ghost Soldiers. At 11 a.m. on Saturday, hours before curtain, Cold Mountain author Charles Frazier joins composer Jennifer Higdon, librettist Gene Scheer, and director Leonard Foglia, as well as other members of the opera’s creative team, for a panel discussion about the choices involved in turning a novel into an opera. Civil War and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer delivers the illustrated closing address, “Father Abraham: The Lincoln Image and How it Was Made,” at 2 p.m. on Sunday. The symposium concludes with a 3 p.m. concert of Civil War songs and stories presented by Mark Lee Gardner and Rex Rideout. For information call 505-986-5928. — J.L.