Opera: Life Is a Dream
Thirty-five years after Lewis Spratlan composed it, Life Is a Dream is finally having its world premiere.
Santa Fe Opera
(505) 986-5900
****
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The story behind the Santa Fe Opera’s new production is itself a tale of “operatic proportions,” said David Belcher in Opera News. Thirty-five years after Lewis Spratlan composed it, Life Is a Dream is finally having its world premiere. For decades, Spratlan looked for a company to mount his masterwork, based on Pedro Calderón’s 1635 play about a prince who is imprisoned in a tower by his cruel father. Even after a concert performance of Act 2 netted the composer a Pulitzer Prize, producers still said no. Now the Santa Fe Opera has mounted a full staging of the work—and it’s magnificent. Despite so much time spent on the shelf, the composition feels “surprisingly fresh” under the baton of Leonard Slatkin.
There’s no question that Life Is a Dream is “an important opera, the rare philosophical work that holds the stage and gives singing actors real characters to grapple with,” said Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times. The atonal score can be a “workout for the orchestra,” but the plot proves to be the stuff of which operatic masterpieces are made. The drama hinges on the conflict between Segismundo, the young prince, and the father who imprisoned him from birth, after receiving omens that his son would grow up to be a tyrant. It’s hard to understand how such a “viscerally dramatic opera had such a torturous path to production.”
The silver lining of the long delay turns out to be that Life Is a Dream has finally received “not merely an airing, but one of this quality,” said James Keller in the Santa Fe New Mexican. Visually, director Kevin Newbury and set designer David Korins have opted for a timeless, fairy-tale look that perfectly frames the action. Slatkin, making his company debut, “conveys Spratlan’s score with precision, clarity, and well-plotted momentum.” Roger Honeywell forcefully portrays Segismundo as he comes into his own, while soprano Ellie Dehn has an endearing take on his love interest, Rosaura. Proving in every way worth the decades-long wait, Spratlan’s opera is a dream come true.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
If/Then
feature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.
By The Week Staff Last updated