#Santa #Fe #Opera

We quickly learned that summer is Santa Fe’s most exciting season and we plunged into the events there.

We bought tickets to the Santa Fe Opera, a famous and respected company that performs under a permanent, soaring tent-like roof that only lets in the rain when wind is blowing, which is whenever it rains during a performance.  The translation of the singing is printed on the back of the seat in front of you, allowing for full understanding of just how silly opera librettos are.

         We saw “Daphne,” a Richard Strauss opera about a woman would rather become a tree than have sex with a God.  Actually it may have been a documentary about my former marriage. 

     We also enjoyed the noon, hour-long Chamber music series, where we heard talented musicians for $15 tickets. 

At a Spanish restaurant, El Mason, we loved the small tapas plates and the Three Faces of Jazz, which is really a quartet and sometimes plays as a quintet.   The trio that isn’t a trio was a fine introduction to Santa Fe quaint.

     As we wandered around Santa Fe, we couldn’t help noticing that nearly every building was adobe, defined as “sun-dried, unburned brick of clay and straw.”   The main variation was between sensuously curved walls that were lighter or darker shades of brown. 

     Adobe apparently prevents builders from creating sharp edges in their structures, which imparted an old Spanish charm to Santa Fe.  Or at least I thought it did until we attended a lecture/presentation by architect Frank Geary, creator of the soaring, metallic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the similarly soaring and metallic Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.  The moderator, noting that this was Geary’s first visit, asked what his impression was of Santa Fe.

Geary’s answer: “Brown.  Everything is brown.”

Of course, he was mostly right, although I think he was wrong in wanting structures of materials other than adobe in Santa Fe.  I say let him go to New York if he wants to find hard edges.