Two Operas, Part 2 - The Farolitos of Christmas

 

NOTE:  This is the second of two posts about opera dress rehearsals I photographed last fall.  See post immediately below this one for the post about the other opera.

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The December dress rehearsal was The Farolitos of Christmas, a one-act opera based on a story by New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya, author of the beloved Bildungsroman, Bless Me, Ultima. The opera's book and score were written/composed by Hector Armienta, whose operas Bless Me, Ultima (2018) and Zorro (2022) have also been presented by Opera Southwest.  Hector was present and engaged at the dress rehearsal.

Farolitos, in northern New Mexico, are the small paper bags ballasted with sand and filled with votive candles to decorate the exterior of homes and buildings during the Christmas season.  You may have heard them referred to as luminarias.  Today the terms are interchangeable, but in northern New Mexico back in the day, luminarias were originally small bonfires lit on Christmas Eve to symbolically guide the shepherds (villagers as pastores) in a ritual procession to the birthplace of Christ.

And -- at least the way Rudolfo Anaya tells it -- the paper bag version (farolitos) didn't exist until 1944 when, in a northern New Mexico village, there was a mischievous, joyful girl named Luz ("light" in Spanish, natch!).

Luz's father is away at war, recovering from wounds and longing to be home in time for Christmas.

Luz lives with her mother and grandfather . . .

. . . but her grandfather is too sick to build the bonfires (luminarias) for the village this year.

Luz wishes that her father was home to take over the work from her grandfather, and they sing a beautiful duet as Luz resolves to assume responsibility for the luminarias.  Her solution is to use . . . yes, paper bags filled with sand and a candle as a substitute for the bonfires:  farolitos (which means "little lanterns" in Spanish).

On Christmas Eve, the villagers re-enact the procession of the pastores, each carrying a candle through the darkened village.

But Luz is ready with her paper bags, sand, and candles, and she enlists her friends, her mother, and her grandfather to help set them out.

Soon, the villagers return to help light the candles.

Then the first snow of the season begins to fall . . .

and, unbeknownst to Luz, her father has returned from the war.

The opera ends with a joyful family reunion and, thanks to a girl named Luz, the beginning of a new tradition:  the farolitos of Christmas.

The Farolitos of Christmas is a heartwarming story for the Christmas season, and perhaps the beginning of a new tradition for Opera Southwest.

If you would like to see the complete dress rehearsal images, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Two Operas, Part 1 - Dolores

 

Last fall I photographed two operas (one in October, one in December) presented by Albuquerque's local opera company, Opera Southwest.  Both have their origins in Hispanic culture and traditions, and both featured scores by Hispanic composers.  This post is about the first one, Dolores.  I will post a separate installment for the second one, The Farolitos of Christmas.

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The October opera was Dolores, based on events in the life of Dolores Huerta, a labor organizer and leader born in New Mexico who worked side by side with Cesar Chavez in the 1960s to co-found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which evolved later into the United Farm Workers (UFW).  The opera takes place in 1968, during the Delano (CA) vineyard workers' strike and California grape boycott . . .

 and depicts key moments in the workers' struggles including Chavez's hunger strike; 

Martin Luther King's and RFK's support for the strike, and their tragic assassinations barely two months apart.

One of the most moving moments was an aria sung by the character of the Ambassador Hotel busboy who held the dying RFK in his arms:

Dolores, Chavez, and the workers' movement faced oppression by growers and the U.S. government (embodied in the character of Richard Nixon, whom my camera loved and who nearly stole the show) . . .

. . . as well as internal disputes among the strike leadership . . .

. . . and, for Dolores, a dark night of the soul:

The opera ends as Dolores rallies the workers to continue the strike and their mission.

We were honored to have the librettist and composer -- Marella Martin Koch and Nicolas Lell Benavides -- attending the rehearsal . . . 

with Nic literally cutting and pasting last-minute changes in the show . . .

 and fine-tuning things with the director and the conductor.

If  you would like to see images from the complete dress rehearsal in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Weekend Ramble

 

Itching to get outdoors on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my friend, Alan, and I hopped in the car and headed out for a serendipity photography ramble.  On the proposed itinerary were three very small villages south of Santa Fe:  Lamy, Galisteo, and Cerillos.

After lunch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, we drove on to Lamy (pronounced "LAY-mee"), so named for Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, who served as Bishop of the Santa Fe diocese from 1853 to 1885.  He was the model for the fictional archbishop in Willa Cather's novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Today, Lamy's principal reason for existence is the Amtrak train station closest to Santa Fe.  We happened to arrive just in time to see the Southwest Chief roll in on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Besides the daily Amtrak train, there's also a wildly-painted tourist train that runs on the 18-mile spur from Lamy to Santa Fe, featuring themed events from wine tasting to outlaw ambush.  To visit their website, click here.

The station was decorated in New Mexico holiday style.

Here are a couple of images from a visit to Lamy in 2021:

And watch out for the loose caboose!

From Lamy we headed 8 miles southwest to Galisteo, another small village (pop. maybe 200).  Not far from the village is the Cerro Pelon Movie Ranch, where pieces of a lot of western movies were filmed, including Young Guns, 3:10 to Yuma, Silverado, and The Cowboys.

We poked around for things to photograph and found this one-lane bridge:

We were apprehensive about driving across it, but while we were photographing it, another car came along and drove over it, so we figured it was safe enough . . . and lived to tell the tale.

On our way out of town we noticed an old overgrown cemetery up on a hill above the town, so of course we had to stop and photograph it.  The cemetery was enclosed by a rock wall, and the front gate was locked with a padlock, so we chose not to enter, and photographed it from outside the wall.  Here are a few views:

Our last destination was Cerillos, originally a mining town for nearby deposits of turquoise, gold, silver, and other minerals.  There is evidence of Native American mining in the hills surrounding the village as far back as 700-900 CE; in the 16th and 17th centuries the mines were controlled by Spanish colonizers using indigenous people as slaves.  

After the end of the Spanish-American War in 1848, land grants were taken from the Spanish owners and reopened to Anglo-American settlers.  By 1880, the area surrounding Cerillos had a population of 1,200 - 1,500, and eventually there were over 2,000 registered mines.  By 1900, however, the mines were exhausted and shutting down, and, like many other New Mexico mining towns, Cerillos began its long slow decline, exacerbated by the Depression and World War II.  Today, there are only about 200 people in the town and environs.

There is still a very active and beautiful church in Cerillos -- St. Joseph's, established in 1922.  We arrived as the sun was sinking fast in the west, but it provided beautiful light for photographing the church.

Here's the "Homage to Ansel Adams" version, complete with moonrise:

If you would like to see these images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!