Baritone Mark Stone crooned and howled with startling power as Gallimard, a punishing role featured in almost every scene in the opera. If you thought Tosca was a “shabby little shocker,” as the late Joseph Kerman put it, this opera blasts far past it on its way over the top. Hwang states that he sees Song as a gay man who portrays women and Gallimard as a gay man who cannot accept his homosexuality. Song even pretended to be pregnant with Gallimard’s child, producing an infant allegedly supplied by the Chinese government and moving to France to be with Gallimard. Song also turned out to be a spy for the Chinese government, causing a furore when their real-life counterparts were put on trial in 1986.Īt the trial, Gallimard reveals that he never knew Song was a man, having never seen him unclothed, in spite of their intimate relationship. The story, based on the life of an actual French diplomat in China, follows the affair between René Gallimard, a civil servant at the embassy in Beijing, and Song Liling, a Peking Opera singer of female roles who happens to be a man. Butterfly, his Tony-winning play from 1988, for Ruo to set to music. For this opera he turned again to David Henry Hwang, the librettist of his second opera, An American Soldier, premiered at Washington National Opera. The Chinese-American composer had his Santa Fe Opera debut in 2014 with the leaden Dr. Butterfly, on Saturday night.Ĭoronavirus postponed this event from the 2020 canceled season, but composer Huang Ruo finally makes his belated return to Santa Fe with this new work. Yet the mountaintop venue is looking once again like the nation’s premiere summer opera destination, beginning with the world premiere of a new opera, M. This summer the company returns to its full five-opera slate, although without works by its founder’s favorites, Mozart and Strauss. Photo: Curtis BrownĪfter 2020, the first summer in its history without live opera, the company presented a shortened season of only thirty performances last year. Kangmin Justin Kim as Song Liling and Mark Stone as René Gallimard in the world premiere of Huang Ruo’s M.
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