Opera note.(Music)(Don Giovanni, Simon Boccanegra, Beatrice and Benedict, Agrippina and La Sonnambula)(Opera Review)

Don Giovanni, Simon Boccanegra, Beatrice and Benedict, Agrippina & La Sonnambula at the Santa Fe Opera.

The Santa Fe Opera had modest beginnings in the late 1950s: open-air seating, a reflecting pool behind the orchestra pit, and the mandatory wearing of sweaters and ponchos by the audience in case the weather turned sour. Now it plays five operas to packed audiences in a covered theater of imposing dimensions, watched over from one side by the solemn, spotlit bust of Igor Stravinsky--an early champion of the company. Santa Fe's founder, John Crosby, can be said to have done more for summer opera--and for the performance of contemporary work as well as the operas of his beloved Richard Strauss--than any other American impresario. Since Crosby's death last year, the company has been in the capable hands of his longtime assistant (and founder of another opera company, in St. Louis) Richard Gaddes. This year's group of operas, though for the first time in many years (ever?) not including a contemporary work or a Strauss opera, was of uncommon interest--not least because the company had attracted a genuine international opera "star," Natalie Dessay, to sing Bellini's La Sonnambula. It's a bel canto exercise entirely foreign to Crosby's aesthetic.

It was a most successful season, with only the new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni falling short. Giovanni is a difficult opera to put across, partly because of the temptation to radical but meaningless stagings, and partly because of the obvious casting problems for various vocal types. Chas Rader-Scheiber's postmodern attempt possessed little generative coherence or fire, and the cast spent most of the first act finding their way into Mozart. By the second all had relaxed, and Mozart--not the staging--became preeminent. Mariusz Kwiecien made a dynamic Giovanni, but not until the final scenes did he gather his energies into concentrated power. Of the rest of the cast, Eric Cutler sang a stylish Ottavio and Ying Huang a winning Zerlina.

Should the company have tackled a big, sprawling Verdi opera such as Simon Boccanegra? Yes--the entire cast responded to this uneven work with commitment and some marvelous concerted singing, not least by Mark Delavan's Simon (after a few rocky early moments) and Patricia Racette's lovely, powerful Amelia. Corrado Rovaris, the conductor, handled the Council Chamber ...