Opera West Brings "A Night at the French Opera" to Santa Fe

Opera West will stage "A Night at the French Opera" across three Santa Fe venues on Oct. 23, 24 and 25. Twelve singers headline a concert program built from seven French repertoire staples.

The cast lists sopranos Brooke Iva Lohman, Rachel Hippert, Lela Philbrook, Tina O'Malley and Erin Rosales, alongside AnnaMaria Cardinalli and Imelda Franklin Bogue. The men's roster includes Benjamin Werley, Conner McWhirter, Mark Cotton, Jose Heredia and Javier Ortiz.

What's on the program?

The announced repertoire spans the core of the French canon (the standard body of French-language opera). Audiences will hear scenes from:

• "Carmen"
• "Faust"
• "Lakmé"
• "Roméo et Juliette"
• "Samson et Dalila"
• "The Tales of Hoffmann"
• "Werther"

That's a broad sweep, from Bizet's gritty realism to Massenet's lyric tragedy. A concert format — scenes rather than full stagings — lets a company cover this much ground in a single evening.

Where and when?

The first two performances take place at St. Francis Auditorium of the New Mexico Museum of Art on Oct. 23 and 24. The third moves to Fogelson Hall at Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe on Oct. 25.

What does this change for Santa Fe audiences?

Practically, it packs a season's worth of French opera highlights into three nights, with a large local cast. Cardinalli is among the performers recently named a national finalist in the American Prize competitions, a signal of the roster's competitive level.

For Opera West, the three-venue run tests audience reach across different Santa Fe spaces rather than relying on a single hall — a format smaller companies increasingly use to widen their footprint.