SFR Picks—Week of June 5

Opera, film, nuclear justice and more

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Popcorn and Arias

Santa Fe Opera and Center for Contemporary Arts team up to preview the 2024 season and its cinematic influences

Director Jean Renoir’s 1939 film The Rules of the Game’s tumultuous history includes a violent response by its first audience, followed by banning and then destruction by Allied forces. Reconstructed in the late 1950s, the film offers both farce and searing critique of French society on the eve of war. Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata tells the story of 19th century Parisian courtesan Violetta’s love affair with nobleman Alfredo, with whom she attempts to run away and forge a new life. In this summer’s Santa Fe Opera production of La Traviata, director Louisa Muller has reset the opera in 1939, and will discuss The Rules of the Game’s film’s influence on this production in advance of a screening that kicks off the Santa Fe Opera’s Screen to Stage Series in collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Arts. The series also will pair Mozart’s Don Giovanni with director Albert Lewin’s 1945 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; and this season’s world premier of The Righteous by composer Gregory Spears and librettist Tracy K. Smith with the 2021 film The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

The opera and CCA had worked together on a film series pre-COVID and it seemed “like a great time to bring it back,” Santa Fe Opera Director of Community Engagement Andrea Fellows Fineberg tells SFR. CCA Cinema Director Justin Clifford Rhody echoes that sentiment, describing the series as “a really beautiful collaborative opportunity.” And having the opera deliver the film choices made for some surprises, he says, such as the third pairing of The Righteous and The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

SFO General Director Robert K. Meya suggested that one, Fellows Fineberg says, and the relationship between film and opera is less one of influence and more one of contrasts. “The Righteous is not about televangelism and the corruption that was depicted somewhat in that film,” she says. But the depiction of how Baker’s faith “led her to fight for rights around HIV and activism around AIDS…that is definitely a motive in The Righteous: where our faith will take us.”

Audiences attending the film screenings will hear from the creative teams on each opera about the ways in which the accompanying film informs this season’s production—from color palettes to political eras to thematic overtones. Approaching opera in this interdisciplinary way may not appeal to purists, Fellows Fineberg admits, but it does reinforce “that opera is an ever-evolving, living, viable art form, and that we can look at it in different contexts.” (Julia Goldberg)

SANTA FE OPERA SCREEN TO STAGE SERIES

All screenings $20 with introductions by the opera’s creative teams

6 pm Monday, June 10: Rules of the Game and La Traviata

6 pm, Monday, June 24: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Don Giovanni

6 pm, Monday, July 8, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and The Righteous

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, ccasantafe.org

One Foot in Front of the Other

If it’s been a minute since you’ve hit Canyon Road, perhaps the new Canyon Road Summer Walk series could entice you to return. On the first Wednesday evening of each month through October, the artsiest street in town will be car-free and a pedestrian’s paradise of collaborating galleries, food, drink, music, revelry and, if we’re lucky, frolicking. “It’s a move to reawaken the spirit of Canyon Road,” Desert Moss Vintage co-owner Esteban Rios y Torres tells SFR by email. Indeed, a little window shopping now that the weather is nicer sounds delightful, but the first-ever entry in the series will also feature an indoors live-audience conversation between Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Santa Fe Poet Laureate Tommy Archuleta, jamz from blues-rock hero Alex Maryol, Diné soul food from Yapopup and so much more, including 50-plus participating spaces spanning the entire road. (Alex De Vore)

Canyon Road Summer Walk: 5 pm-8 pm Wednesday, June 5. Free. Canyon Road, canyonroadsummerwalk.com

Justice Delayed

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham makes a brief cameo in Lois Lipman’s award-winning documentary First We Bombed New Mexico. Then a congresswoman, Lujan Grisham tells the New Mexico downwinders who have come to Washington, DC, to lobby Congress for restitution that “no one should have to fight this hard.” Truer words. The fight to expand the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to cover New Mexico’s victims continues today, as its June 7, 2024 expiration date approaches. Since last year’s premier at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, the film tracing activist Tina Cordova’s relentless quest for justice has traveled across the country, winning several awards. It returns home this week for multiple community screenings and Q&As. “The time is incredibly urgent right now,” Lipman tells SFR, who says she made the film “so we could reach more people in an intimate way that would touch people’s hearts and bring about change. That’s why we’re doing this.” (JG)

First We Bombed New Mexico community screenings

June 7-12, Violet Crown, 1606 Alcaldesa Street, santafe.violetcrown.com

With Q&A 6 pm, Friday, June 7 with activist Tina Cordova and director Lois Lipman; moderated by University of New Mexico Associate Professor Myrriah Gómez

Q&A at 6 pm, Saturday, June 8 also includes downwinder and musician Paul Pino; moderated by organizer, educator and musician Eileen O’Shaughnessy

The Levee Breaks

Surely Santa Feans still live here who recall rock/Americana/country/indie act Hundred Year Flood, right? Sure, it’s been more than a decade since we heard from Felecia Ford and Bill, Jim and Kendra Palmer—at least in the band’s current configuration—but they’re back together and playing shows in Texas and New Mexico, and you’re reaping all the benefits—like Believe, a record the band recorded in 2009, but only released wide this year. “We haven’t been in a room together since...it’s been a while,” guitarist and singer Bill Palmer tells SFR, “but I could see if this goes well and the chemistry feels right...well, we’re already talking about possible new material and maybe a record.” Focusing on the now, Believe feels relevant despite its advanced age. Think Texas-infused country/electric rock with elements akin to Tom Petty or Thin Lizzy, plus gorgeous vocals from Ford and no shortage of riffy goodness. “I feel like it’s going to be like riding a bicycle,” Palmer adds. “I know when we get together and start playing, that creativity is gonna start flowing.” (Alex De Vore)

Hundred Year Flood: 8 pm Saturday, June 8. $15. The Mine Shaft Tavern, 2846 Hwy. 14, Madrid. (505) 473-0743