Opera japonica/Richard Gaddes

Richard Gaddes

The summer festival at Santa Fe is one of America's best-loved opera events and a personal favorite of Opera japonica's Maria Nockin who attends each year. This year's productions included Die Ägyptische Helena (R Strauss), Falstaff, Mithridate (Mozart), Lucia di Lammermoor, and Wozzeck.

Maria Nockin took advantage of her visit to the festival to call on Richard Gaddes, the new General Director of the Santa Fe Opera, at his beautiful office at the 'Opera Ranch' in the mountains seven miles outside the city. She talked to him about his career, Santa Fe and the question of presenting opera in the original language using translated titles.

Maria Nockin: Where were you born?

Richard GADDES: I was born in a town called Wallsend [in the northeast of England]. It was the location of the end of the Roman wall on the East Side and [later Emperor] Hadrian had a camp there.

Nockin: Where did you get your musical education and how did you get into arts administration?

GADDES: I went to Trinity College of Music with the idea of taking a degree and becoming a teacher of music. My instruments were piano and violin. In order to support myself when I was a student, which I had to do because my father disapproved of my studying music, I got a job at the Wigmore Hall, which is a famous [London] recital hall. That is how I ended up not teaching but rather going to work in arts administration.

Nockin: I understand that you founded an artists' management firm as soon as you graduated from college.

GADDES: When I was a student, a colleague of mine and I started a series of lunchtime concerts at the Wigmore Hall for aspiring musicians, so to that extent we did have a management business. My colleague was more experienced than I, but I was involved in it. Incidentally, one of the first musicians to play in those concerts was James Galway.

Nockin: From what I've read, it was not long before you were invited to Santa Fe. How did you like coming over there from England?

GADDES: Well, it was a culture shock because I was living in the center of London one day and in the middle of New Mexico the next. I must say that when I first came, which was in March of '69, this city was very different and took some getting used to, but by the time I came back to take up the job in June of that year, everything had blossomed and it was wonderful. I fell in love with it and I've been in love with it ever since. It is a wonderful place to be.

Nockin: Do you stay all winter?

GADDES: I regard Santa Fe as my home. We have an office in New York, so I travel there a bit, but this is my home.

Nockin: I understand that you left Santa Fe for St Louis at one time.

GADDES: I was the founder of the Opera Theater of St Louis and the first season of that company was in 1976, but I was actually wearing two hats at that time. I was working both here in Santa Fe and in St Louis. Eventually, the St Louis company became so successful that I had to make a choice between working for it and Santa Fe. It seemed to me that I should go to St Louis, so I left Santa Fe in 1978. Actually, it's very complicated. I came back to Santa Fe in 1988 to run the Apprentice Program in the summers, but then, in 1994, I was again working in Santa Fe full time.

Nockin: The Opera Theater of St Louis does every opera in English, but began doing so before titles came into existence. What are your thoughts on translated opera now that the original language is more easily available?

GADDES: I actually feel - this is only a personal opinion - that with the availability of titles it is hardly necessary to sing in English any longer. I have even mentioned to my colleagues in St Louis, who prefer everything in English, that perhaps the time has come to sing in the original language. The problem with singing opera in English is that the companies that demand it are very few, so the opportunities for a singer who learned Traviata in English to repeat the role are minimal. As a result, I think singing opera in English, today, is limiting in terms of singer availability. Many of them just won't do it.

Titles are very successful. I was in the audience at Falstaff the other night and the audience roared with laughter because they understood everything. We don't translate in a way that is too distracting, either. The phrase we use is that the title 'whispers in your ear' what is going on. It does not translate every single word, but it gives you the gist of the text. We have titles in Spanish as well as in English for Lucia and Falstaff. It's a very good initiative that we have to continue. The system actually takes seven languages.

Nockin: Can you tell me about your time at Opera America?

GADDES: Well, actually my stint on the board of Opera America was a long, long time ago. It was a very different organization then from what it is now. Opera America, which is a service organization for opera, has diversified a great deal. There are many components to it. It is a much bigger, far-reaching organization today than it was in the early 70's when I was involved with it.

Opera America was created by the biggies: Glynn Ross, who was then in Seattle, Carol Fox in Chicago, Kurt Herbert Adler in San Francisco, John Crosby, here in Santa Fe, and Robert Collinge in Baltimore. So, it was mainly the larger opera companies getting together to try to further the art form. It has grown enormously. Today it tends to encompass the whole spectrum of opera companies, both large and small.

Nockin: What are some of the projects that you worked on this season?

GADDES: Well, we're very very pleased about the results of the campaign to attract New Mexicans to the Santa Fe Opera. Historically, only about 38 percent of the people attending the opera here have been from this state, which we felt was rather low. I'm happy to tell you that in the space of one year we have increased it by 10 percent. We have done that by offering tickets to people who have not yet been in the new theater, built in 1998, at a 50 percent reduction. That is for any ticket, any place in the house and for any performance.

That was a special campaign we had in spring and the results of it exceeded our wildest expectations. Actually, we sold almost 7,000 tickets, which is extraordinary. That combined with other user-friendly initiatives such as shuttle buses from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, earlier starting times and lectures prior to the performances, have been very successful. These changes have given the opera a caring, user-friendly image. They are a wonderful success.

The exterior of the Santa Fe Theatre

Photo: Dan Barsoth

Nockin: One of the most interesting productions you did this summer was Alban Berg's Wozzeck. I was particularly interested in the soprano, Anne Schwanewilms who is new to us.

GADDES: She is a wonderful singer and it was thrilling for us to have her American debut. She loves working here and has expressed a great interest in coming back.

Nockin: I understand that you are beginning to have performances in Santa Fe in winter as well as in summer.

GADDES: Yes, Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore will open on the 23rd of November. That will be the Santa Fe Opera's debut in the Lensic Theater [a newly renovated, all year round theater in the center of the city] and we are doing 10 performances. It's part of our plan to present productions in town during the off-season. We have a wonderful cast including many of the singers who were in The Beggar's Opera last year.

Nockin: Do you use some of the apprentices in the off-season productions?

GADDES: We do, yes, there will be a couple of apprentices singing roles in Pinafore.

Nockin: What kind of programs do you have for introducing school children to opera?

GADDES: We have one of the best education and outreach programs in the country. We do a lot of work in the schools on a continuing basis. We have a workshop for schoolteachers to assist them in teaching the children about opera and we have a touring company that goes to, I believe, eight states.

We also have a very successful program that allows the students to write and perform their own operas. Of course, we also have our 'Youth Opera Program' which gives school children the chance to attend dress rehearsals of three operas this year. Before coming to the theater, they are given a great deal of information about the operas they will be attending that season, too. That far reaching program is tied to our nationally-applauded Pueblo Opera Program, run by a marvelous person called Andrea Fellows Walters, which brings in children from the Native American communities.

Nockin: Who are some of the singers you have discovered?

GADDES: Well, I've been very active in the careers of Frank Lopardo who is singing Edgardo in Lucia. I gave him his professional debut in 1984 at St Louis. I was also the one who found Alexandra von der Weth, now singing Lucia here. I've been instrumental in the careers of Jerry Hadley, Thomas Hampson, Suzanne Mentzer and Kevin Langan. A lot of young singers either got their experience here in Santa Fe or at the Opera Theater of St Louis, which was a great place for giving young singers who had graduated from universities or apprentice programs a chance to perform on stage in their own right.

Nockin: You have auditions all over the country for the apprentice Program here at Santa Fe. In how many cities do you hear young singers?

GADDES: We usually hear singers in eight or nine cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Bloomington, Indiana, Tallahassee, Florida, etc. We cover the territory.

Nockin: I understand that next summer's opera include: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Rossini's L'Italiana in Algieri, Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae and Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin. Is this the first time The Santa Fe Opera has mounted a work by a woman composer?

GADDES: No, It is not! Judith Weir composed an opera called A Night at the Chinese Opera which was presented here in 1989.

Nockin: What are your thoughts on the future of opera?

GADDES: The art form has grown enormously in recent years. There are a number of reasons for that. People have more leisure time and more disposable income. I think the advent of translations, or titles, has made opera more accessible to a wider public, and also I have to say I think the Three Tenors' and Andrea Bocelli's concerts have resulted in a large number of converts to opera as well.

The proliferation of opera companies is quite astonishing. When I was first involved with Opera America I think there might have been about sixty opera companies in the US, now there are probably close to two hundred.

. . . to sum up our part in this, we have sold more tickets this season that we have in many seasons. Now, that is helped partly by the New Mexico Campaign, but our productions of Falstaff and Lucia are pretty well sold out.

Nockin: Thank you very much.

The Santa Fe Theatre

Photo: Robert Reck

Maria Nockin also reviews this year's Santa Fe Festival this month.