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Santa Fe beckons conductor Challenging opera attracts FW's Harth-Bedoya

August 14th, 2005 Sunday
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By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News

SANTA FE, N.M. - On a bright, sunny morning, a no less sunny Miguel Harth-Bedoya strides into the lobby of the Inn of the Anasazi, a chichi hotel just off the Santa Fe Plaza. At 9:30 a.m., the 37-year-old Peruvian music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has already hit a local bookstore that specializes in South American books. What has brought Mr. Harth-Bedoya to the popular New Mexico destination is opera, not literature. But the work he's conducting for Santa Fe Opera is about the Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca and the actress and producer Margarita Xirgu, who helped popularize the writer's plays.

This is the conductor's first time in Santa Fe and his conducting debut with the nation's pre-eminent summer opera festival. His vehicle is the 2-year-old Ainadamar by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, who's something of a hot property these days. Reflecting the multiple cultures of his own upbringing, as the son of Eastern European Jews in South America, Mr. Golijov's music mingles Latin dances with Middle Eastern chants. And there's no mistaking his fondness for bright and luxurious sounds.

Mr. Harth-Bedoya got to know Mr. Golijov nearly two decades ago, when they were both students in Philadelphia. "It was my first year at Curtis," Mr. Harth-Bedoya says, "and he was already at the University of Pennsylvania, studying with George Crumb. One of the things I was involved with right away was composers, who were always looking for people to perform their music. So I started doing his music as a student."

Mr. Harth-Bedoya's career is flourishing these days, with major-league guest-conducting gigs on both sides of the Atlantic. He's had far less operatic than symphonic experience, but his 2003 Fort Worth Opera debut in Romeo and Juliet suggested a real affinity for the medium. "I think that Miguel is golden," says soprano Dawn Upshaw, who sings the role of Margarita Xirgu in the opera, "and so does everybody working with him here. He is really, truly exceptional. "One of the greatest things is that he's kind of a singer's dream. His conducting breathes and really lives in musical phrases just the way that a singer hopes for. I already was a huge fan, from my experience with him. But now, here in Santa Fe, having spent much more time with him, and getting to know how he works and how he hears music and forms a musical idea, I'm truly in awe of him. I can't say enough about how wonderful it's been." Ainadamar is hardly operatic business as usual. "This was conceived with electronics as an essential part of the piece," Mr. Harth-Bedoya explains. "The voices were meant to be amplified, because of the density he wants to write for the orchestra at certain points. And there are some electronic sounds, sampled sounds, that I have to coordinate with. "And it has certain rhythmic styles that you have to change very quickly, from a Spanish ballada into a Latin- American-Caribbean rumba into the flamenco. We also have a Cuban danzon-type number, some contemporary bolero-like rhythms. Because in the opera you're traveling from country to country, from Uruguay to Spain to the idea of going to Cuba, the music changes in a second. "The meters are very regular, which is what happens in Latin-American music, but within the pattern everything happens - all the syncopations, cross-rhythms. But it's a lot of fun. I'm certainly not bored!"

Mr. Harth-Bedoya says the shifting idioms ring true to life in Argentina, which he often visited in his youth. "Peru and Argentina have had all these ups and downs of governments, dictatorships left and right and short-term democracies - constantly. It was like a big soap opera."

Kelley O'Connor, the young mezzo-soprano who sings the "trousers" role of Garcia Lorca in the opera, says Mr. Harth-Bedoya "has been really great with this piece." "He's very easy to follow, and he helps us as much as he can. It's very tricky with the computer element and the orchestra. He has a monitor with the computer sound in front of him, and at times he has to follow that beat." Adding to Mr. Harth-Bedoya's challenges, the Santa Fe production represents a major revision of the opera. Ainadamar was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the Tanglewood Music Center, its highpowered summer school for budding young musicians. Robert Spano conducted the premiere there in 2003, but Mr. Harth-Bedoya was tapped to conduct three additional performances, culminating in Santa Fe. One of them, sponsored by New York's Lincoln Center and scheduled for the Brooklyn Academy, had to be canceled when Ms. Upshaw had a spell of throat problems. But she recovered in time for a February 2004 run with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall. Mr. Harth-Bedoya was then the Philharmonic's assistant conductor, although he has since left the post to concentrate on Forth Worth and building up guest-conducting credits.

Ainadamar was composed rather hastily for Tanglewood, and although the first reviews were generally positive, there was a good deal of thought that the piece needed more work. Peter Sellars, the provocative stage director tapped for the Santa Fe production, was very much involved in the revisions, along with Mr. Golijov and librettist David Henry Hwang. "He's great," Mr. Harth-Bedoya says of the often controversial director. "He's a combination of a genius and crazy, but a good crazy person."

One 15-minute chunk of brand-new music arrived only nine days before the Santa Fe production was to open, on July 30. Because orchestra rehearsals were already half through, inserting a full-orchestra accompaniment at this point was out of the question. So Mr. Golijov scored the scene, in which Xirgu recounts meeting Garcia Lorca in a Madrid bar, for only a guitar and a Spanish percussion instrument. "Of course, you read about Rossini composing as the rehearsals were going on," Mr. Harth-Bedoya says. Ms. O'Connor praises Mr. Harth-Bedoya for keeping a cool head through changes that were being made almost until opening night. "It takes a lot of patience when the music isn't all written, and when the living composer is there with you," she says. "There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And Miguel knows when not to say too much, although he will always stand up for the singer. "Normally, when you work on a piece that is already established, like a Puccini opera, the conductor is very much in charge. With something like this, you have to be much more relaxed and take criticism from all sides." Mr. Harth-Bedoya has been commuting from Fort Worth, where he'll preface the symphony's main season with a Sept. 1-4 festival of music by Eastern European composers from Liszt and Smetana to Bartok, Kodaly and Janacek.

The grand finale will be a concert performance of Dvorak's opera Rusalka.

Other upcoming operatic gigs include Tosca with the Minnesota Opera and Utah Opera, a January 2006 reprise of Ainadamar at Lincoln Center's new Rose Theater and a production of Stravinsky's Le rossignol with the Curtis Institute's opera department. Looming later are a 2008 Barber of Seville for Canadian Opera and projects still under discussion with English National Opera and Cincinnati Opera. That's in addition to guest-conducting dates with the orchestras of Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis and Houston as well as London's BBC Symphony and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.

He'd better be enjoying those relaxing mornings in Santa Fe.

E-mail scantrell@dallasnews.com

Ainadamar repeats at 8:30 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Aug. 23 and 26 at Santa Fe Opera. Tickets $24 to $142. Call 1-800-280-4654 or go to www.santafeopera.org.