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Sunday, October 25, 2009
Operatic Hijinks
By David Steinberg
Journal Staff Writer
Salomé Martínez-Lutz is coming home to help Santa Fe celebrate its 400th anniversary.
A Santa Fe native, Martínez-Lutz lives only 55 miles away in Albuquerque, but her return to the stage in her hometown is special for her: She is directing and singing in the Teatro Nuevo Mexico production of "El Barbero de Sevilla."
The comic zarzuela will be staged at Santa Fe's Lensic Performing Arts Center.
"It makes me feel welcome because I wanted to do this," Martínez-Lutz said.
She said Teatro Nuevo Mexico applied for, and was approved, to present the zarzuela, or Spanish operetta, under the auspices of the city's anniversary celebration.
"El Barbero," a farcical sitcom, takes place off-stage in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Burgos before the opening of a production of Rossini's famous opera "The Barber of Seville." The zarzuela's story is brimming with opera singers in various entanglements.
There's Nicolas, the catalyst for many of the story's hijinks. He's an opera singer who is running around on his wife, Casimira, and is having an affair with the opera diva La Roldán.
Meanwhile, Nicolas and Casimira's daughter Elena wants her own career as an opera singer. Nicolas is so upset with Elena's goal that he fires her voice teacher, though she secretly takes lessons.
Nicolas' concern probably stems from his guilt from two-timing his wife. La Roldán is being duped because she thinks her lover is single.
Elena has her own budding romance. She's dating a young man named Martín, who himself is an operatic baritone, but whose cover story is that he's a surveyor.
Martínez-Lutz is singing the role of La Roldán, which she sang in the 2007 and 2008 Teatro Nuevo Mexico stagings at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
This week's Lensic performances will have piano accompaniment by Pablo Zinger, who is the show's music director.
Maurice Bonal, president of Santa Fe 400th Anniversary Inc., said the zarzuela fits nicely with the city's celebration.
"It was brought here from Spain and it's been performed over the decades. And most important is the fact that these are New Mexicans who are trying to keep the zarzuela tradition alive — the education and the tradition," Bonal said.
"El Barbero" premiered in 1901 in Spain.
The performers in this production are Virginia Herrera as Elena, Mauricio Trejo as Martín, Jose Garcia Davis as Nicolas, Nelly Maria Kirmer as Casimira, Paul Barrientos as Cesar Bataglia, José Daniel Apodaca as Benito Sanchez, Jaime Pardo as Lopez, Marcus Sanchez as Perez and Pepe Gallardo as the on-stage stage manager.
The low ticket prices, Martínez-Lutz said, is an encouragement for the whole family to attend.
Though sung in Spanish, the program will have a synopsis of the operetta. "And you can tell what's going on just by the shenanigans," she said.
Martínez-Lutz is a founder and the president of Teatro Nuevo Mexico. She still considers Santa Fe her home though she hasn't performed there for two decades. Martínez-Lutz attended the Loretto Academy for 12 years — "The nuns and my parents gave a sense of a work ethic" — and then graduated from the College of Santa Fe.
As a CSF undergraduate, she had leads in "The Fantasticks," "Guys and Dolls" and "Macbeth." She assistant-directed and stage-managed "The Time of Your Life" and she directed several Federico Garcia Lorca comedies at CSF summer workshops.
Martínez-Lutz was in the drama program as a graduate student at Illinois State University before working with Derek Lewis in musical theater in Santa Fe and moving on to New York City.
"I like the idea of bringing what I learned in New York (at Repertorio Español) to Santa Fe," she said.
Martínez-Lutz received a master's degree in theater at the University of New Mexico and has taught theater in the Albuquerque Public Schools and Chicano theater at UNM.
If you go
WHAT: "El Barbero de Sevilla," sung in Spanish
WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, and Friday, Oct. 30
WHERE: Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco, Santa Fe
HOW MUCH: $10, $15 and $20 for the general public, $5 discount for students and seniors in advance at the Lensic box office, online at www.ticketssantafe.org or by calling 505-988-1234 or at the door
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