Opera Man Wraps up the Opera Season

Wraps, as in gifts, as in... oh, just roll with it.
By Zach Hively

It’s that time of year again, when we are all left wondering what to get that one special person in our lives who watches our dogs.

That one special person—let’s call him Richard because that is his name—already has everything he could ever desire, including time with our dogs, our fridge stocked with beer when he arrives, and a decent percentage of our money.

But what Richard does not have is a ticket to the opera. We recommend giving him one, based entirely on how much he enjoyed The Elixir of Love at the Santa Fe Opera this summer.

The first glowing thing we can point out about Donizetti’s and Romani’s opera is its modest runtime: Unlike certain other operas we might mention if we knew more about operas, this one did not require us to book our dogsitters in order to attend. Handy, that, seeing as we’d invited him to come with us after his wife turned us down.
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But that is hardly the only glowing thing. The set itself also glowed—washed in warm light reminiscent of how I imagine things looked ca. 1946, full of sunflowers imported (we must presume) direct from Italy. A billboard filled the on-stage sky—but a warm billboard, an Italian billboard, with hand-painted lettering and imagery of pre-GMO farming practices. Not one of those blocky sans-serif atrocities pounding you with JAWS OF DEATH? CALL JEFF! and then a phone number with one numeral repeated seven times so you can remember it even after the most traumatic of traffic jams.

Billboard in background, with Yaritza Véliz (Adina) in front. Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.

This billboard made us want some warm bread. Which, we must note, was not served during intermission. That is the only thing we might recommend the opera do differently.

Well, that and one other thing. We’ve been meaning to report this to the operatic management for weeks now: This opera was mistakenly quite funny. Opera is not ever supposed to be funny, leastwise not in the deep understanding we have from attending three whole operas this summer, for which we always stayed awake.

Opera is meant for Serious Themes and Tragedy and Foreign Singing—and, sometimes, enough Death and/or Mental Anguish for JEFF! to ambulance-chase each of the principals backstage.
We don’t know if this humor was a prank on the part of Director Stephen Lawless living up to his name, or a cast gone rogue on closing night. But Elixir was undoubtedly funny—funny enough to threaten men less secure than us.

In fact, the opera as staged garnered two distinct and hearty laughs before anyone but the Chorus sang. One involved a rooster, and the other the letter A on a chalkboard. (We don’t wish to give away the punchlines, lest this staging—first done in 2009—gets another revival in fifteen more years.)
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The opera continued to defy our expectations, largely because the plot made sense. Nemorino—aka Nemo, at least in our hearts—loves Adina from afar. In that warm Italian light, she is as luscious as the billboard. 

Billboard in background, with Yaritza Véliz (Adina) in front. Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera

But he cannot compete with Sergeant Belcore, who rolls into town with a whole army and declares he is, more or less, going to annex Adina.

Nemo, naturally, despairs. Even though he has access to a sexy red car, he’s just a grease monkey. He doesn’t have a uniform with medals—just one with his first name on it—and thus he has no chance.

Until! Doctor Dulcamara pulls up with his wares. He’s no snake-oil salesman; rather, he is a Bordeaux salesman, labeling cheap wine with expensive promises. Nemo buys up his love potion and promptly gets cocky enough to blow off Adina. She is so annoyed by this mechanic she brushed off earlier that she decides to marry the Sarge forever. That’ll show him, alright.

Alfredo Daza (Dulcamara), the Santa Fe Opera Chorus, with billboard in background. Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.

What a perfect time for intermission. We had a glass of bubbly—but no warm bread—with Richard. He loosened up enough to tell us about how he took a stagecraft course in college in the 1970s and spent a summer building sets at this very opera house.

This surprised us nearly as much as Elixir making sense did. The opera, we presumed, was meant for untouchables—individuals removed from the rest of us by their vocal ranges, by their stitchcraft, by their billboard-design aesthetics. Richard is a really great guy, but, like, one willing to have a beer with me. Without me even paying for it. The farthest thing from otherworldly.

Is… is it possible that the people behind the opera are just regular people who happen to be good at something considered highbrow? Could they be as human as the rest of us, more or less?

Perhaps it’s time we re-examine our beliefs about all things operatic.
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But not until this second act concludes, because this is when things get wild. Nemo comes into a million Italian bucks, but HE DOESN’T KNOW IT. He’s the only one who doesn’t know it, too—so naturally, being a man, he presumes all these women are now into him for his own potion-enhanced looks and charm. Except for Adina, somehow. He needs more potion, but since the only car in town is now repaired with working headlights and all, his only choice is to join Sarge’s army for a few lousy dollars.

​Center: Sexy red car, Cadie J. Bryan (Giannetta), Jonah Hoskins (Nemorino), the Santa Fe Opera Chorus. Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.

Mayhem ensues. There’s a brawl on the sexy red car, and a priest rides in on a Vespa wearing leather (the priest, that is, not the Vespa). There’s singing and a door that opens in the billboard and we really don’t feel right spoiling the finale of a show first staged less than two hundred years ago, but we will note that everyone ends up happy except the ol’ Sarge, and even he’s not too bent out of shape. After all, the next town over has got to have more women who look as good as Adina does, in this light.

So. Based entirely on how heartily Richard laughed throughout this inadvertently comical melodrama, we say you cannot go wrong buying your dogsitter some summer-season opera tickets for the holidays. Or any kind of gift that supports the arts! We recommend it all. It might depend on your type of dog, or your type of Richard.
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If you live in the Southwest, we recommend the Santa Fe Opera. If you don’t, you can still buy tickets from the Santa Fe Opera. They won’t stop you.

​Center: Sexy red car, Cadie J. Bryan (Giannetta), Jonah Hoskins (Nemorino), the Santa Fe Opera Chorus. Photo by Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera.