Santa Fe Opera Announces 2022 Season
The 2022 Season continues on July 2, 2022 with Rossini’s most popular comedy,The Barber of Seville, in a new production whose playful energy springs directly from his ebullient music. In Stephen Barlow’s witty interpretation, Seville and Santa Fe meet and merge in a sunny and whimsical world where anything can happen. The familiar sunbaked colors of southern Spain meld seamlessly with Santa Fe Opera’s beloved and unique natural backdrop, and a clever revolving stage adds a multiplicity of possible locales to the usual interior and exterior settings of this opera. Designer Andrew D. Edwards’s elegant and colorful costumes based on 18th-century period clothing freely embrace fantasy and Mitchell Harper’schoreography surprises at every turn in this charming production illuminated by lighting designer Chris Akerlind.
Mexican conductor Iván López-Reynoso makes his company debut leading eight performances with an exciting cast that includes Santa Fe Opera audience favorite Joshua Hopkins as the resourceful Figaro and former Santa Fe Opera Apprentice singers Emily Fons and Jack Swanson who will dazzle as Rosina and Count Almaviva. Bass Ryan Speedo Green makes his company debut as Don Basilio and bass Kevin Burdette sings the role of Doctor Bartolo. Susanne Sheston is the Chorus Master.
Based on Le Barbier de Séville (1775), the first play of the ‘Figaro Trilogy’ by the French Revolutionary-era author Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais, Rossini’s opera traces the efforts of clever Figaro to win for his master Count Almaviva his chosen bride, Rosina. Rossini himself was a delicate balance of 18th-century craftsman and 19th-century trailblazer and with Barber he created an opera whose modesty belies its mastery, a structure buttressed by the most sophisticated musical dramaturgy but whose facade is sheer fun.
