A steller opera season, an atomic highlight
The Santa Fe Opera’s final two days are a harbinger of summer’s end — when the music stops on Opera Hill, fall is definitely in the air, even if the official start doesn’t occur until later in September. The 2018 season winds down with Ariadne auf Naxos tonight, Madama Butterfly on Friday and Candide on Saturday.
This summer marks the end of Charles MacKay’s tenure as executive director of the opera; he is leaving after a decade, with Robert Meya succeeding him as general director starting in October.
It seems fitting that the hometown boy — MacKay grew up in Santa Fe and graduated from Santa Fe High — has in his final season an opera set in New Mexico, one that was truly a showstopper. Doctor Atomic, the work of composer John Adams and librettist Peter Sellars, tells of events leading up to the detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo.
The piece, which debuted in San Francisco in 2005, is set in New Mexico about the bomb made in New Mexico.
For the first time, it was performed just miles away from where the nuclear era began. As a result, the New Mexico production featured not just a stellar cast and piece of music; this Doctor Atomic brought together the elements that make this place unique.
It will be performed again and well in other venues, but never again will operagoers see the lights of Los Alamos as they hear debates about whether the weather will allow the bomb’s detonation. Never again will dancers from nearby pueblos participate, sharing their Corn Dance in an unheard of combined effort among various pueblos. Never again will “downwinders” — the people who lived near the detonation of the first bomb and who today have serious health problems — join the cast onstage, a public acknowledgement of the cost of the nuclear age here at home. The production presented a unique synthesis of music, place and moment — coming together in a planet on edge because of erratic world leaders, nuclear uncertainty in North Korea and the worry that the globe could be headed for another major conflict. All of this, with magnificent lightning storms serving as the backdrop for many of the performances.
As critic Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said of this production: “Nothing could stop the making and detonating of the bomb. Nothing has been able to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons since. And nothing stopped a performance of the most significant, I’d say the greatest, opera of our time.”
And that is the enduring legacy of the Santa Fe Opera, to bring together singers, musicians, great works and the setting, all to offer entertainment that embodies the moment and, in doing so, becomes more than a performance. This summer, Doctor Atomic reflected the uneasiness of our sadly unsettled world, contributing to another banner season. Well done!