At 6:08 p.m. Wednesday evening Alisa and I departed for the opera house to hear Benjamin Britton's Billy Budd with baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes singing Billy and tenor Bill Burden as Captain Edward "Starry" Vere.
We arrived in time for the 6:30 opera talk that was excellent with a discussion of Herman Melville's and E.M. Forster's preoccupations. We weren't given any paperwork on the presentation so I don't have a record of the presenter. He was very, very interesting and did something I thought was useful in preparing for the opera: he had us sing some of the motivs.
After the presentation we shared a veggie wrap and refreshers while seated in the theater courtyard enjoying the evening and the company. We spoke to a gentleman from Los Angeles who had missed the end of Tuesday's Figaro because he had passed out at intermission. The medics were called and he was taken to the hospital to have a cut on his head attended to. He blamed himself for the mishap, saying he had overexerted himself in the thin air of the mountains.
The gentleman looked healthy and fit on Wednesday and said he had fully recouperated. I wondered before I left for Santa Fe if I would have difficulty with the altitude, but only found I had less stamina on stairs and puffed when walking more than short distances.
I wondered how the singers managed, but none that I heard seemed to be at all affected.
We took our seats in the auditorium. With no curtain, I saw the fo'castle of a ship at the back of a sharply raked stage with the pilot wheel stark against the cloudy Santa Fe sky. The ship's foretop and crossmast held center stage. As the evening light faded the motley sound of horns, drums and flutes rose from the orchestra pit. The last rays of the evening sun glinted of the wheel and illumined the darkened scene -- a perfect night in Santa Fe.
I had always been a tenor fan – the higher the better, until I got to counter-tenors and Handel with mezzos just didn’t do it for me. I always thought baritones sounded like they were burping instead of singing. Until I saw Don Giovanni in Cincinnati in 2004 with Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the don. I had never seen anything like it in my life – Rhodes energy, passion and power poured off the stage. And the music! His tender “deh, viene al a finestra” was the most seductive voice contrasted with his fury in the final act when he ripped off his shirt and leapt across the stage. I’d never given opera singers’ bodies much thought before that, (truly) except as musical instruments. I’m not sure opera singers should disrobe on stage, but I’ll tell you the theatrical impact was stunning.
Since then, I have been willing to give baritones a little more leeway. I thought Hvorostovsky was brilliant in the Met’s Onegin last season, although I only saw it in simulcast. I enjoy Nathan Gunn and saw him perform Billy Budd in Pittsburgh last year. I collected Rhodes CDs: The Voice, Vagabond, Love for Three Oranges, Faure’s Requiem, and Mozart Arias and got his Little Prince DVD. I saw him in Cosi in Cinti last summer, but was disappointed because the part is really not big enough for him.
I’d known for over a year that Rhodes would be in Santa Fe, and truthfully it was hard to believe that the night had come -- that I was sitting in the Santa Fe opera house anticipating an evening of complete joy.
First, the orchestra under Edo de Waart was brilliant; second, Bill Burden as Vere was magnificent; third, the chorus was glorious. I never quite got Billy Budd musically, but this performance made the sound comprehensive to me for the first time. The insular world of the story, the sense of fantasy, Claggert’s “natural depravity” – all represented and transformed in music. And those crazy nets with men continually swarming up and down.
I was upset with the P’burgh Budd because they left Nathan Gunn hanging from the rafters while Vere finished up and it freaked me out – that can’t be good for a singer! And what if something happened and he fell down!
But this was worse, ‘cause there was no harness to save Rhodes as he muscled his way up and down, over and across a web of nets twenty feet off the ground in an incredible display of agility and power. And he had wind to sing magnificently on only 66-percent of sea-level oxygen.
I’m always surprised by the depth and the power and the lusciousness of Rhode’s voice. I also loved when he sang with the huge chorus and all that male anima was amplified. There were at least three dozen men on that stage, at times. At one point – during the ode to England -- Rhodes is the spearhead of the chorus in a choreographed segment that mimicked the surging of the sea and evoked the power of the royal navy.
An odd thing happened in the second act when Billy punched Claggert and Claggert fell down dead. People in the audience laughed. They laughed quite a bit. It wasn’t really funny, but it was slightly odd. It’s too bad Billy couldn’t have hit him with a marlinspike or something; it would have been less amusing.
During the curtain calls the entire rear of the stage was blocked by the sail that hid Billy’s body from view during the hanging scene. Almost unseen behind the sail, while the supporting cast was taking its calls, Burden/Vere, Rose/Claggert and Rhodes/Budd embraced in acknowledgement of a great work accomplished. I wanted to share in their congratulations.
By midnight my night of Billy Budd at the Santa Fe Opera was ended: it was worth every minute; it was worth every penny; it was worth every mile.
Note: The production earned a positive review by Anthony Tommasini in the August 2 New York Times .
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