The 2025 Festival Season is quickly approaching and we’re setting the stage with a specially curated film series featuring titles that complement the stories coming to life at the opera this summer!

Start time: 6 pm
Location: Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA)
1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87505
Admission: $20

The Santa Fe Opera and tailgating go together like popcorn and movies – or wine and cheese. Join us for a mini-tailgate before the show! Beginning at 5 pm, we will feature wines served by Highgarden Entertainment (purchase at the event) and cheese selected by Picnic New Mexico Cheese & Charcuterie (pre-purchase for $13/person). Santé!

Tuesday, June 24
La bohème – RENT (2005)

We open with RENT. Before the screening, La bohème director James Robinson will offer insights into the universal themes that connect Puccini’s masterpiece to its Broadway and Hollywood reinventions. Set in New York City’s gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. “Measuring their lives in love,” these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.

James Robinson, a celebrated director and arts administrator who has worked at opera houses across the US and globe, is Seattle Opera’s fifth General and Artistic Director. He comes to the Pacific Northwest after serving as the Artistic Director at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for 16 years, where he directed numerous world premieres, among them Terence Blanchard’s Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27, Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown and Tobias Picker’s Awakenings. In Seattle, Robinson directed the 2004 production of Bizet’s Carmen, selling the most tickets of any production in the company’s history.

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Friday, July 18
The Turn of the Screw – The Innocents (1961)

Director Louisa Muller returns to introduce her award-winning production of The Turn of the Screw with a screening of The Innocents (1961). Based on the Henry James story The Turn of the Screw, a psychological thriller about a woman who takes a governess job for two orphans in a Victorian home. She begins to see what she believes are ghosts and suspects the children’s bizarre behavior is the result of supernatural powers.

American director Louisa Muller’s production of The Turn of the Screw for Garsington Opera was the recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award and named by The Guardian as one of the Top Ten Classical Music Performances of the Year. Last season, she returned to Garsington Opera to direct Platée and made debuts with the Santa Fe Opera with La traviata and Pinchgut Opera with Rinaldo, all new productions. She holds degrees from Lawrence University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a citizen of the United States and Germany and makes her home in Vienna.

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Friday, July 25
Die Walküre – Sing Faster (1999)

To complete the series, Die Walküre director Melly Still will answer questions before a showing of the 1999 documentary Sing Faster. In the film, Jon Elise goes backstage at the San Francisco Opera to explore the work of the stagehands as they prepare for the seventeen-hour production of Wagner’s The Ring Cycle.

Melly Still has worked as a director, choreographer, designer and adaptor. Her work has travelled throughout the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, the Far East US and Broadway. She has been nominated as Best Director and for Best Design at both the Olivier and Tony Awards for her National Theatre production of Coram Boy. Melly recently directed a new production of Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves for Theater St. Gallen and returned to Glyndebourne in 2022, directing The Wreckers by Ethel Smythe; while her 2019 production of Rusalka was released to great acclaim on DVD.

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About Moderator Dr. Fineberg

Don Fineberg is a psychiatrist. His presentations focus on a variety of topics related to clinical practice, education and the arts, especially opera. He has led Opera and Psychology seminars for more than 20 years. For the last six festival seasons, his Opera InSight video series appears on the Santa Fe Opera website and YouTube channel. Opera InSight enhances your enjoyment of opera by taking a deeper dive into opera’s psychological themes: our passions, problems and foibles that make us human.

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