Never mind the future when it comes to the soprano Tamara Wilson. Either way, the signs are promising for Gaffigan, who takes charge of the Komische Oper in Berlin next year. Greater experience might bring more deliberate harmonic and thematic direction, perhaps more purpose to transitions and more of a willingness to linger, just as making Wagner a habit rather than an exception here might, in time, sand down some of the rougher edges of the orchestra’s playing. His was a take on the score both muscular and swift, blessedly so for a show that ended well after midnight.
SANTA FE OPERA 2022 FULL
James Gaffigan, typically lively on the podium for what is his first run of a full Wagner opera, sparked up a feisty intensity that supplied the energy the staging tended to resist, pushing the drama hard but not harshly. There is a refreshing feeling of trust to it all, a sensible desire not to get in the way of what clearly remains to these young collaborators a basically human story - and a willingness, perhaps above all, to make space for the music. Soto’s costumes hint at abstraction, rather than declaim distance as a goal. The spare set, from blueprints by the architecture and design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, consists of four angled walls of mottled gray - cutouts evoking a castle tower, say, but no more than evoking it. Heijboer Castañón and Winokur offer no drastic interventions in the plot, just a delicate understanding of it as a tale of intimacies, friendly and erotic alike.
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