![Isabel Leonard as Ada and Nathan Gunn as Inman [Photo by Ken Howard]](http://www.operatoday.com/2%20Isabel%20Leonard%20%28Ada%29%20and%20Nathan%20Gunn%20%28Inman%29%20in%20%E2%80%98Cold%20Mountain.%E2%80%99%20Photo%20%C2%A9%20Ken%20Howard%20for%20Santa%20Fe%20Opera.png)
03 Aug 2015
Cold Mountain Wows Audience at Santa Fe World Premiere
On August 1, 2015, Santa Fe Opera presented the world premiere of Cold Mountain, a brand new opera composed by Pulizer Prize and Grammy winner Jennifer Higdon.
Subscribe to
Opera Today
Receive articles and news via RSS feeds or email subscription.
Recently in Performances
Edward Gardner conducts Berlioz's L’Enfance du Christ
L’Enfance du Christ is not an Advent work, but since most of this country’s musical institutions shut down over Christmas, Advent is probably the only chance we shall have to hear it - and even then, only on occasion. But then Messiah is a Lenten work, and yet …
Fantasia on Christmas Carols: Sonoro at Kings Place
The initial appeal of this festive programme by the chamber choir, Sonoro, was the array of unfamiliar names nestled alongside titles of familiar favourites from the carol repertoire.
Dickens in Deptford: Thea Musgrave's A Christmas Carol
Both Venus and the hearth-fire were blazing at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance during this staging of Thea Musgrave’s 1979 opera, A Christmas Carol, an adaptation by the composer of Charles Dickens’ novel of greed, love and redemption.
There is no rose: Gesualdo Six at St John's Smith Square
This concert of Christmas music at St John’s Smith Square confirmed that not only are the Gesualdo Six and their director Owain Park fine and thoughtful musicians, but that they can skilfully shape a musical narrative.
Temple Winter Festival: The Tallis Scholars
Hodie Christus natus est. Today, Christ is born! A miracle: and one which has inspired many a composer to produce their own musical ‘miracle’: choral exultation which seems, like Christ himself, to be a gift to mankind, straight from the divine.
A new Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Opera House
Fairy-tales work on multiple levels, they tell delightful yet moral stories, but they also enable us to examine deeper issues. With its approachably singable melodies, Engelbert Humperdinck's Märchenoper Hänsel und Gretel functions in a similar way; you can take away the simple delight of the score, but Humperdinck's discreetly Wagnerian treatment of his musical material allows for a variety of more complex interpretations.
Rouvali and the Philharmonia in Richard Strauss
It so rarely happens that the final concert you are due to review of any year ends up being one of the finest of all. Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s all Richard Strauss programme with the Philharmonia Orchestra, however, was often quite remarkable - one might quibble that parts of it were somewhat controversial, and that he even lived a little dangerously, but the impact was never less than imaginative and vivid. This was a distinctly young man’s view of Strauss - and all the better for that.
‘The Swingling Sixties’: Stravinsky and Berio
Were there any justice in this fallen world, serial Stravinsky – not to mention Webern – would be played on every street corner, or at least in every concert hall. Come the revolution, perhaps.
The Pity of War: Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano at the Barbican Hall
During the past four years, there have been many musical and artistic centenary commemorations of the terrible human tragedies, inhumanities and utter madness of the First World War, but there can have been few that have evoked the turbulence and trauma of war - both past and present, in the abstract and in the particular - with such terrifying emotional intensity as this recital by Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano at the Barbican Hall.
First revival of Barrie Kosky's Carmen at the ROH
Charles Gounod famously said that if you took the Spanish airs out of Carmen “there remains nothing to Bizet’s credit but the sauce that masks the fish”.
Stanford's The Travelling Companion: a compelling production by New Sussex Opera
The first performance of Charles Villiers Stanford’s ninth and final opera The Travelling Companion was given by an enthusiastic troupe of Liverpudlian amateurs at the David Lewis Theatre - Liverpool’s ‘Old Vic’ - in April 1925, nine years after it was completed, eight after it won a Carnegie Award, and one year after the composer’s death.
Russian romances at Wigmore Hall
The songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov lie at the heart of the Romantic Russian art song repertoire, but in this duo recital at Wigmore Hall it was the songs of Nikolay Medtner - three of which were framed by sequences by the great Russian masters - which proved most compelling and intriguing.
Don Giovanni: Manitoba Opera
Manitoba Opera turned the art of seduction into bloodsport with its 2018/19 season-opener of Mozart’s dramma giocoso, Don Giovanni often walking a razor’s edge between hilarious social commentary and chilling battles for the soul.
Jonathan Miller's La bohème returns to the Coliseum
And still they come. No year goes by without multiple opportunities to see it; few years now go by without my taking at least one of those opportunities. Indeed, I see that I shall now have gone to Jonathan Miller’s staging on three of its five (!) outings since it was first seen at ENO in 2009.
Sir Thomas Allen directs Figaro at the Royal College of Music
The capital’s music conservatoires frequently present not only some of the best opera in London, but also some of the most interesting, and unusual, as the postgraduate students begin to build their careers by venturing across diverse operatic ground.
Old Bones: Iestyn Davies and members of the Aurora Orchestra 'unwrap' Time at Kings Place
In this contribution to Kings Place’s 2018 Time Unwrapped series, ‘co-curators’ composer Nico Muhly and countertenor Iestyn Davies explored the relationship between time past and time present, and between stillness and motion.
Cinderella goes to the panto: WNO in Southampton
Once upon a time, Rossini’s La Cenerentola was the Cinderella among his operatic oeuvre.
It's a Wonderful Life in San Francisco
It was 1946 when George Bailey of Bedford Falls, NY nearly sold himself to the devil for $20,000. It is 2018 in San Francisco where an annual income of ten times that amount raises you slightly above poverty level, and you’ve paid $310 for your orchestra seat to Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
Des Moines: Glory, Glory Hallelujah
A minor miracle occurred as Des Moines Metro Opera converted a large hall on a Reserve Army Base to a wholly successful theatrical venue, and delivered a stunning rendition of Tom Cipullo’s compelling military-themed one act opera, Glory Denied.
In her beginning is her end: Welsh National Opera's La traviata in Southampton
David McVicar’s La traviata for Welsh National Opera - first seen at Scottish Opera in 2008 and adopted by WNO in 2009 - wears its heavy-black mourning garb stylishly.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Performances
The librettist was Gene Scheer who wrote texts for Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick as well as Tobias Picker’s Thérèse Raquin and An American Tragedy. Scheer based his libretto for Cold Mountain on Charles Frazier’s historical novel of the same name. Higdon has successfully redirected her formidable efforts from the symphony to the theatre, and in doing so has produced a most memorable first opera. Not only do her vocal lines underline the personalities of each character, they are melodic, witty at times, and generally reflect the time and place of the setting.
Although director Leonard Foglia told his tale with occasional flashbacks, the action generally surged forward to capture the emotional punch of the novel. Robert Brill made his scenic design of dark boards juxtaposed at various angles. With the addition of Brian Nason’s lighting and Elaine J. McCarthy’s projections, they could be made to resemble land, sea, and the star-filled sky. David C. Woolard’s costumes were accurate as to time and place.
Ensemble cast
Baritone Nathan Gunn sang the leading role of W. P. Inman, a wounded infantryman who deserts the Confederate army in an desperate effort to make his way back to Ada, his beloved. Gunn’s large, warm, resonant voice endeared him to listeners from the very beginning of the opera and the audience felt a loss when he died. As Ada, Isabel Leonard was a well brought up young lady who, in Act I, had no knowledge of how to survive in wartime. Her light, lyric mezzo-soprano voice denoted her youth and occasional exuberance, but it was not until the second act that she solidified her portrayal. It was the darker-voiced mezzo-soprano, Emily Fons, who created an immediately recognizable character in her depiction of the edgy, strong-willed Ruby. With golden sounds that included an opulent mid-range, she sang that her only teacher was hunger while she taught Ada how to live off the land and plan for a Spartan future.
Many artists portrayed smaller parts in this panoramic opera. Kevin Burdette was a notable blind man and a selfish deadbeat dad. Roger Honeywell gave a nuanced dramatic performance as Veasey, whose boat seemed to capsize in the air, dumping him and Inman into the dark of night. As Lucinda, whom Inman found hunting for valuables on the bodies left to rot on the battlefield, Deborah Nansteel sang with formidable vocal power while expressing the desperation of a runaway slave.
Emily Fons as Ruby and Jay Hunter Morris as Teague
Although tenors are usually heroes who get the girl, Teague, sung with great gusto by heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris, was a murderous villain who continually tried to cause trouble for anyone who did not support ideas of the Confederacy. Morris proved to be a singer whose bronzed tones could enchant an audience while they resonated with evil. Surprisingly, in the end it was not Teague who killed Inman, it was the young boy he had trained to carry on his violent work.
Some of the music of Cold Mountain hit the audience directly in the solar plexus. One of its most stirring moments took place when the dead soldiers who said they had long been forgotten, rose from their graves to tell the audience what they died for. Chorus Master Susanne Sheston’s male apprentices sang with nuanced dramatic power:
“Buried and forgotten
In our beautiful country
Where we lie buried We rest beneath every step you take,
In the dust, in the ground on which you tread.”
Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya led an orchestra of interesting proportions that offered pungent harmonies and displayed an enormous tapestry of musical color thanks to the inclusion of considerable brass and percussion. Currently, the opera is being recorded by the Dutch label, PentaTone. Since Cold Mountain’s five scheduled Santa Fe performances sold out early, a sixth one has been added.
Maria Nockin