Alfresco

At Santa Fe Opera, a new orchestration of Monteverdi's "Orfeo."

- By Alex Ross

Desert-bright weather in the southwestern United States has long inspired architecture that opens itself to the land and the sky. Pueblo cliff dwellers carved shelters into walls of rock; Spanish settlers wrapped houses around courtyards that became, in the words of the pioneering California architect Irving Gill, outdoor living rooms. In a similar spirit, Los Angeles modernists like R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra designed semi transparent homes with light frames and sliding doors. In the performing arts, dry summers fostered the building of Greek-style amphitheatres, the Hollywood Bowl being the most famous example. Schindler wrote in 1926, The distinction between the indoors and the out-of-doors will disappear. One of the most spectacular instances of indoor-outdoor architecture in the Southwest can be found on a hill north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the edge of a rugged landscape of mountains, mesas, and arroyos. Santa Fe Opera, which presents a five-work season each summer, occupies a remarkable performance space that is open on the sides and the back, with swooping roofs that have the weightlessness of wings. In an acoustical mystery that invites comparison with the beautiful anomalies of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, voices project handsomely in the auditorium without getting lost in the wind. Bewitching serendipities are routine. At a recent performance of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, a stiff breeze kicked up as the Helmsman sang, Dear south wind, blow once more!