Performer: Timothy Mix

Santa Fe Opera's colorful and beautifully sung The Golden Cockerel makes a case for more Rimsky-Korsakov opera in the repertoire.

Santa Fe Opera presented Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in Stephen Lawless’ mid 19th-century staging, a co-production with Barcelona's Liceu. Before the overture, General Director Charles MacKay came onstage to announce that Stephen Costello was ill and would be replaced by Joshua Guerrero, a graduate of the Los Angeles Opera Young Artist Program.

One of my favorite things about opera in concert is the absence of director’s concept. Don’t take me wrong: I do enjoy a well-directed opera production with a concept.

“Poetry and again poetry – tenderness mixed with pain; sensuality, a drama surprising and burning, and a rocketing finale.” This is composer Giacomo Puccini describing one of the world’s most famous operas, La bohème.

When in 2009 Baltimore Opera Company announced bankruptcy and closed its doors indefinitely, opera lovers were devastated. Being left without opera felt like losing a dear family member. However, sad as they were, Baltimoreans never gave up hope that one day their opera would rise from the ashes and come back in its full grandeur.