ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
Imagine the world-famous Santa Fe Opera is having a press conference to announce its 2006 season, which will be its 50th anniversary. Never mind that the 2005 season hasn't started yet, this is opera and things are done differently. Many events have seasons and it's important for the rest of us to distinguish ourselves from NASCAR and baseball. The Stieren Orchestra Hall is surrounded on three sides by the original artwork of the polite, unassuming and clearly quite mad artist known only as Gronk. In a rapid two weeks he has painted, presumably with the aid
of some anti-gravity boots and a delightful potpourri of crushed ephedra petals, somewhere around 1,000 square feet of set for
Ainadamar
, the Osvaldo Golijov opera about Federico Garcia Lorca. The result is a fierce and earthy, three dimensional mural rich in bold, gestural shapes and somehow decidedly Spanish; there are forms that might be wine bottles or legs of ham and others that are, depending, the curious jewels or the obsessive tendrils of the Iberian psyche.
Ainadamar
, we are assured, is part of the 2005 season, which, again, we are not here to talk about. It's a little game the opera likes to play with culture journalists, whom they suspect of being perhaps less acute and more malleable than their "newsie" counterparts. Well, it's true-we arts writers are squishy on the inside and lack the backbone of hardened journos-you can tell by the way we clap for everybody and rarely refuse a bribe-but if you can't stand before a soulful artwork and weep like a dying puppy, how can you be expected to translate the experience for your presumed readership? Still, whether wimpiness is a job requirement or not, as executive director for the opera Richard Gaddes (or the Gaddolator as he's often known in the halls of cultural combat) took center stage before the assembled, uh, creampuffs, his steely gaze caught my eye and I knew he had my number. I'd deliberately avoided shaving and worn a day-old t-shirt rather than the starchy, Ross Dress for Less button-down my ass-kissing colleagues had unanimously chosen, just for the sake of appearing non-plussed by all this opera buffoonery. But the Gaddolator had seen me staring with open awe at Gronk's astounding onslaught of a set and knew that he had but to say "Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter" and I would be putty in his hands.
Fortunately, I was saved when Gaddes and I were both distracted by the mobile phone of some tool sitting up front. It's one thing to neglect to silence your Nokia in polite company, but it's another thing altogether to be at the opera and have Beethoven as your ringtone. How pedestrian. The shocking thing though, was that just as Congressman Tom Udall was riffing on critical congressional funding for culture, the guy's phone rang again. I may have been the least showered person there, but at least I knew I was out of the running for chief asshat. If there was going to be a runner-up to phone guy for that position, I was laying odds on the mayor. When he got up and spoke, I'm pretty sure the main thrust of his stilted, yet practiced, Norteño drawl was to draw some satisfaction from the fact that he personally, having been born in Santa Fe, had been here longer, if only just, than the opera. Bravo, Mr. Mayor! At least one can generally find the opera, however, something altogether more difficult when it comes to our theoretical leader. And, again, unlike the mayor, the opera had invited us to witness its
plan
, a word that may as well be unrecognizable gibberish to the Delgado. When a wasp flew into the room and hovered just over the mayor's leathery skull, I wanted it to sting him so bad I almost peed. I don't want the mayor injured you understand, just animated in some way-any way. And when those lilting keys started hammering forth from the tinny speaker of a mobile phone for the third time, I think I did pee just a little bit.
In the end, in the fuzzy haze caused by the chemical reaction between Gronk's epic artwork and the titillating absurdity of a room full of press more star-struck and hungry than interested in opera, I think I got the gist: Next year's opera season will be very exciting and full of hoopla, returning all-stars and massive tribute works and ticket sales will begin earlier than normal. It all sounds pretty good, but me, I'm for living in the present and the 2005 season looks a fair bit better to my eyes anyhow. Tickets to
Ainadamar
, by the way, are either being rapidly sold or mysterious sucked into a secret lava pit. Either way, if you want some, get them quick.
AND THE OTHER SIDE
One thing about a time of war, particularly one so based in rudimentary religious difference, it makes you realize that the thick middle of our country is crawling with strapping, Bible-thumping farm boys who just wanna please Jesus, fight terrorism and get to college on a GI ticket. In fact there are quite a few more of those than the theoretical Quran-clapping disenfranchised Muslim kids who want to get to Allah on a martyr ticket, at least by Haleh Niazmand's reckoning.
The Iranian-born artist currently showing at CCA (1050 Old Pecos Trail, 982-1338) with Harmony Hammond, sees the American variety of religious fervor all the time as she now dwells in the buckle of the US Bible Belt. Having fled Iran via Turkey and then resigned herself to a life of blazing conceptual guns as an artist, writer and curator, she's survived through fortitude, keen observation and smart analysis. Niazmand knows a thing or two about religious fundamentalism and what she's seen in the United States pales in comparison to anything she experienced in Iran. Meditate on that while you view her wall-mounted grid of fleshy bullet holes, each terrible wound individually and lovingly hand-crafted by Niazmand and comprised of a full gamut of skin shades. The work at CCA isn't as immediately accessible to a broad audience as the artist imagines, but if you're willing to engage it, her small, tightly crafted exhibition has an exponential way of producing thoughtful, precious and devastating rewards.
