"The Righteous" Has World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera

The opening scene of The Righteous: l-r Greer Grimsley (Paul), Brenton Ryan (CM),
Michael Mayes (David), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Jonathan).

REVIEW

Gregory Spears' The Righteous, Crosby Theater, Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe

RODNEY PUNT

Gregory Spears.

Highly anticipated at this 67th season of the Santa Fe Opera was the world premiere production of The Righteous, an opera commissioned by the company from the New York-based composer Gregory Spears, setting a libretto by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and memoirist Tracy K. Smith. The production was directed by Kevin Newbury, whose previous work at Santa Fe Opera included The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in 2017 (reviewed by myself here and in its Seattle Opera incarnation by my colleague Erica Miner here), and was conducted by SFO newcomer Jordan de Souza. I took in the fourth of six performances on July 30.

The setting is an unidentified locale (Texas?) in the American Southwest during the 1980s, when President Reagan proclaimed his term in office, with unintentional irony, as “Morning in America.” (In reality, Reagan's election represented a politically retrograde revolt by America's conservative interior states against its more progressive coastal ones, along with the ideas the latter were embracing to propel the country toward more liberal social policies.)

However, having invoked just enough real-life context for what the opera was to unfold, Smith and Newbury avoided any further direct reference to then-current history or personalities, so that only in a general sense does that decade’s socio-political climate inform the work’s two Acts, each of about 70 minutes' duration.

The Crosby Theater's al fresco setting, enhanced by its open sides, provided cinematic views of New Mexico's incomparable blazing skies, and the unfolding drama of The Righteous duly recalled the scope of classic Hollywood films such as 1955's Giant, where Texas cattle-ranchers, in testosterone-driven competition with oil barons and their dirty wells, vied for control of land and the state capital, while their pretty wives sipped mint juleps and decorated huge mansions. 

The Righteous is thus a Texas-sized morality tale in which a circle of family and friends pursue multi-generational power, with tugs of war between ambition and personal relationships: archetypical struggles where timeless religious and temporal political power intertwine by habit and history in a land where the Protestant former leans toward Fundamentalism and the latter fervently embraces the notions of individual freedom and self-reliance. 

l-r: Michael Mayes (David), Greer Grimsley (Paul).

In Spears' and Smith's debut opera all this requires a lot of words, and the density and quantity of dialogue often had audience eyes swiveling up to the close-caption scrolling to catch all the spoken action's nuanced twists and turns.

The story opens with charismatic oil magnate Paul (powerful bass-baritone Greer Grimsley) on a hunt with his son Jonathan (countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo), as the former prepares to run for state Governor. Paul's hunting partner and political protégé, the preacher David (plangent baritone Michael Mayes), is also considering a run for Governor at the suggestion of political adviser “CM” (tenor Brenton Ryan), who recognizes that David’s charisma and drive make him ideal for political as well as priestly success.

Michael Mayes (in real life born in the Texas city of Cut and Shoot, no less) brought authenticity and a nuanced pathos to his pivotal role. The story centers around David's personal and professional life, but while he demonstrates uncanny public leadership skills, he seems unaware how manipulative he is, and what effects his ambitions have on others. 

l-r: Michael Mayes (David), Anthony
Roth Costanzo (Jonathan).

The sensitive Jonathan's best friend is this same David, for whom he has special feelings that are reciprocated but not with the same sensibility. David tells Jonathan that God wants him to marry his sister, Michelle (radiant soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano), who later agrees. Meanwhile David's friend Eli (tenor Andrew Turner), a serviceman in David's church, is called up for overseas military duty, and leaves over the protests of his wife Sheila (soprano Elena Villalón). 

Paul’s death early in Act 2 enables David's (successful) run for Governor, but his drive for achievement and recognition alienates him from Michelle, who leaves him. After Eli's death in battle, David marries his widow, Sheila (sweet-voiced soprano Elena Villalón), a parishioner he had recruited to lead a women’s group, but she too eventually departs. Despite his outward success, David's constant ambition makes him unable to connect with people emotionally and even Jonathan finally feels he must move on. 

In the end David admits to alienation and loneliness: always assigning his ambition to "God's will," he has failed to see that his actions reflect that ambition's essential selfishness. His character recalls the 1960 film, Elmer Gantry (from the Sinclair Lewis story), where charismatic preacher Gantry (Burt Lancaster) delivers fiery sermons to persuadable country rubes. But where Gantry knows he is manipulating people (film audiences relished his virtuoso con-artistry), David in The Righteous, while also self-promoting, is so sincerely focused on his mission that it's hard to feel real contempt for him. Rather than outrage, one's disapproval tends instead to pity which, unfortunately for this work, is an emotion hard to invoke real dramatic heft in an operatic context.

l-r: Elena Villalón (Sheila), Jennifer Johnson Cano (Michelle).

In this very crowded, quasi soap-scenario, the large cast of 17 named individuals establish a pattern of contrasting gender behaviors. The self-absorbed career ambitions and personal drives of the first Act's male characters yield, in the second Act, to the kinder sensibilities of the females. This contrast is one of the work's main points, typified when, late in Act 2, the former wives, Michele and Sheila, meet accidentally and form a bond of friendship that neither had been able to find in their marriages to David.

The work's other key character is Jonathan, an un-outed gay devoted from childhood to David. Eloquently portrayed by Anthony Roth Costanzo, he weaves in and out of the story’s main arc, occupying an almost Christ-like presence as an implied moral conscience. As with other aspects of this work, a Hollywood film is invoked—Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on a Larry McMurtry story, in which a similar gay/straight relationship develops.

Anthony Roth Costanzo (Jonathan), with members of the Santa Fe Opera Chorus.

Musically, the long first Act's single-minded quest for power is evoked in Spears’ churning and thickly orchestrated score. Indebted to Minimalist models, its relentlessly dark and dense textures pile one on another in almost numbing succession. By welcome contrast Act 2—focusing as it does on relationships between the women characters—is much more lyrical, with the SFO Orchestra under Maestro de Souza (left) emphasizing the transparent textural interplay of strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion.

As in past years, Santa Fe Opera in this crowded work benefited from a depth of vocal resources. Credit the training and cultivation of singers this company invests in each year, with a special shout-out for the Apprentice program, its opportunities for young singers (and technicians) being among the nation's most impressive.  

Despite some reservations over the story per se and its operatic handling, the singing and stage presences of the principals were uniformly impressive, their voices carrying over even the thick orchestral textures of Act 1. 

The ensemble cast of The Righteous, against the backdrop of distant Santa Fe scenery.

                                                                 

---ooo---

Crosby Theater, Santa Fe Opera, 301 Opera Drive, Santa Fe, NM, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, 8:00 p.m.

Images: Gregory Spears: Composer website; The production: Curtis Brown Photography.