In 1956, in the high desert just north of Santa Fe, N.M., a young New York conductor had a vision to build an outdoor opera house. Many scoffed at such an idea in the Southwest, but John Crosby persisted. He had fallen in love with opera as a young man attending the Metropolitan Opera.
Nearly 70 years later, the Santa Fe Opera, which opens its annual two-month season on June 27, attracts singers, directors, stage designers and conductors from across the globe. In many ways it has a sort of operatic pipeline to New York and the Metropolitan Opera.
“There’s this wonderful legacy of artists who have had their debut here and gone onto the Met and other houses,” Robert K. Meya, general director of the Santa Fe Opera, said during a recent phone interview. “And John Crosby’s vision was very tied to the Metropolitan Opera. He first heard Richard Strauss at the Met, and he moved very quickly to bring many of Strauss’s first operas to Santa Fe years later.”
That early vision of championing Strauss’s lesser-known works defined the company — six of his operas had their professional U.S. debuts in Santa Fe, including “Capriccio” in 1958 and “Intermezzo” in 1984 — in the decades after his death in 1949.
Crosby’s vision to stage a world premiere or a U.S. premiere almost every season among its five annual productions has also distinguished the company.
“That’s 20 percent of the season,” the director Bruce Donnell, who has staged many productions in Santa Fe and at the Metropolitan Opera, said in a recent phone interview. “Imagine the Met or a major opera house doing 20 percent of their repertory in new works.”
Crosby had attended a boys school in nearby Los Alamos in his teens (relocating because of asthma) and after attending Yale and Columbia nurtured the idea of an opera house in Santa Fe, a city long associated with the arts for its stunning setting and its allure for artists in the early 20th century such as Marsden Hartley and, most famously, Georgia O’Keeffe.
Crosby borrowed $200,000 from his parents to lease land on a former ranch (the company now owns its 155-acre spread) and opened a 480-seat outdoor wooden theater in the summer of 1957.
Igor Stravinsky came out the first season, at Crosby’s invitation, for a production of his opera “The Rake’s Progress.” The lyric soprano Kiri Te Kanawa made her U.S. debut at the opera in 1971. Many established names followed.
The current theater, built after the wooden structure burned in 1967 and renovated extensively in 1998 (including covering the partially open roof that too often became part of the show during New Mexico’s rainy season), seats about 2,100 with the sides of the house still open to the elements. Translation titles, almost identical to the ones at the Metropolitan Opera, are on the back of each seat (in English and Spanish), rather than above the stage.
In addition to the setting and the big names it attracts, the company is known for nurturing young talent.
“We have the oldest apprentice program in the U.S. started in 1957,” Meya said. “The big houses come to Santa Fe for what we call industry week with directors, artistic directors, agents and general managers from all over the world. From those two days, our 40 apprentices are hired to sing at the Met and all over the world.”
This summer is an example of several returning artists and role debuts. The bass baritone Ryan Speedo Green — who debuted in the title role of “Don Giovanni” in Santa Fe last summer and will perform it at the Met this fall — returns to the Santa Fe Opera this summer for his role debut as Wotan in “Die Walküre.” And Tamara Wilson, who made her role debut in “Tristan und Isolde” in 2022, will debut as Brünnhilde in “Die Walküre” this summer.
“Singers love going to Santa Fe for its beautiful surroundings and the laid-back atmosphere,” Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, wrote in an email. “As America’s leading summer opera festival, it has also been a launchpad for the careers of rising young singers, both from this country and abroad.”
For many singers, Santa Fe — and the opera — are home.
“In 1989 I was invited by John Crosby to cover in ‘Chérubin’ after I had done it at Manhattan School of Music, and he also let me sing Flora in ‘Traviata,’” the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham recalled in a recent phone interview. “Someone else got sick singing Annina in ‘Der Rosenkavalier,’ then I sang in ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ in 1990 and Cherubino in ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ in 1991, and then I made my Met debut as the Second Lady in ‘The Magic Flute’ that same year.”
Graham, who grew up in Roswell, N.M., and has owned a home in Santa Fe since 2002, has seen the company lure more singers who hear about its reputation and dramatic setting.
“It’s like a working vacation, and many of us call it opera camp,” Graham recalled. “I feel like the place itself is magic and the opera company optimizes that.”
Donnell started on the stage crew at the Santa Fe Opera in 1967 and began directing there in 1987.
“We were paid $20 a week, and after one week on the job I was totally caught up in all of it,” Donnell said. “John Crosby was like Rudolf Bing in that he had a vision of what he wanted an opera company to be.”
In fact, Bing, the Austrian-born general manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972, didn’t quite understand Crosby’s vision, Donnell recalled, even though Crosby credited Bing’s outsize influence on opera as his inspiration for creating the Santa Fe Opera.
Despite coming out for the opening season and encouraging Crosby for many years, Bing initially was confused, Donnell said.
“He famously asked Crosby, ‘Where is Santa Fe?’”
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