Out of the Ashes

In the eternal, brooding mountains of New Mexico, things take a long time to grow and even longer to change.

Yet amid the Sangre de Cristo range outside Santa Fe this year, a dramatic new feature has jutted up in a matter of months. It is the Santa Fe Opera Company's new theater, a bold cross between an open-air arena and a Pueblo fortress. It has no side walls, and its see-through stage provides the action with a striking natural backdrop of dancing hills. Above the orchestra seats, a red wood-beamed adobe canopy sweeps up ward, then breaks off abruptly to re veal a broad area of New Mexico sky.

The structure is really something, especially since a year ago it was really nothing. Fire destroyed the old 1957 building in midseason last year (TIME, Aug. 4, 1967). Against awesome odds, General Director John Crosby rode herd on a double-shift construction schedule through the winter and spring to get the house ready for last month's season opener.

Anguish to Joy. Continuing in its tradition of skillful, venturesome productions, the Santa Fe company last week gave the U.S. premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's dark, somber statement of musical theosophy, Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob's Ladder). Schoenberg wrote it in 1917 as an oratorio, but left it unfinished at his death in 1951. Santa Fe presented it as a visually cool, shadow-filled, dreamlike mystery play. In the final scene, the Dying Person (Soprano Patricia Wise) is led up a silver-covered staircase as she approaches death; then she begins to realize that she has gone through many other lives and deaths, and her anguish turns to joy and awakening.

Written in the composer's emotional, pre-twelve-tone style, the music predict ably irritated some listeners and in spired others. But there was no denying the touch of a master in Jakobsleiter's expressionistic orchestral colors and its delicate, wispy, half-song half-speech. Neil Peter Jampolis' silver-staired setting, Robert Baustian's serene conducting and, among the fine cast, Bass-Baritone Donald Gramm's deep, firm-voiced Gabriel only added to the success of the occasion.

It was a fitting follow-up to Santa Fe's earlier U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze's The Bassarids, a stark, twelve-tone retelling of Euripides' The Bacchae. The libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman rang out with eloquent pathos. The cast struck a perfect balance of harshness and lyricism under Composer Henze's baton. Perhaps best of all, though, was the spectacular scene depicting the burning palace of Pentheus. Smoke billowed and red lights flickered. Once again flames soared at Santa Fe--but this time they were just part of the show.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.