Review: Santa Fe Opera Online Benefit Concert

On March 11, 2021, Santa Fe Opera presented an online benefit concert to support its renowned apprentice programs.

Singing the concert were former apprentices mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, tenor Jack Swanson, and baritone Will Liverman. World-renowned, Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and Academy-Award winner Ruth E.Carter hosted the program and spoke nostalgically of their summers at Santa Fe Opera and how the time spent there changed their lives. Other singers including Sylvia D'Eramo, Zach Nelson, Duke Kim, Brianna Hunter, and Galeano Salas added fond memories of their time at the Opera Ranch, as did numerous technical graduates who work in the field.

Baritone Will Liverman, who was the Metropolitan Opera's first black Papageno in that company's holiday rendition of Mozart's The Magic Flute and won the 2020 Marian Anderson Vocal Award, sang an unusual solo piece, Silvio's aria from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Liverman has a resonant voice and he sings with a great deal of attention to the character he is creating on stage. He and collaborative pianist Chris Reynolds gave a sensitive rendition of this gem.

Mezzo-soprano Emily Fons sang Jadwiga's aria from Stanisław Moniuszko and Jan Chęciński's nineteenth century romantic Polish opera, The Haunted Manor (Straszny dwór). Pretty, young Jadwiga takes part in a fortune telling ceremony in hopes of finding out who she will marry. She knows the Church has forbidden attempts tell the future, but she hopes God won't mind just this once. Fons sang with exquisitely smooth lyric tones and Reynolds' piano was most supportive.

Jack Swanson, who sings a live recital for Houston Grand Opera on March 12, 2020, performed a song often associated with Louis Armstrong. Bob Thiele, George David Weiss wrote "What a Wonderful World" in 1967 when Armstrong recorded it. Swanson sang it with bright tenor tones that blended magnificently with the buoyant piano of accompanist Roderick Phipps-Kettlewell.

Although the concert was short, it put across the point that programs training young people in the many crafts that opera requires need to be available for talented prospective artists. We all know that opera needs singers and musicians, but it also requires stage directors, makeup artists, costumers, scenic and lighting designers, prop makers, and many other kinds of artists, many of whom can study at Santa Fe Opera. This video stream can be seen with no charge at https://www.santafeopera.org/future/

Photo of Jack Swanson by Craig Van Der Schaegen

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