of an evening, Claude would appear in the dining room dressed in one of Kay Stephens’creations, long full skirt of heavy white cotton with a matching wedding shirt. She’d give the trio…piano, bass and violin—a sign and they would play the opening bars of La Vien Rose. Claude, her throaty voice suggestive of Marlene Dietrich, would sing in French. The audience loved it and her, and she’d follow with a couple more French songs. When Claude wanted to be, she could be exceedingly charming. She could also be a bitch.
John Crosby’s opera opened during the summer of 1957. Little did we realize that it was destined to become internationally famous or that it would change Santa Fe forever.
John Levert, a tall, blond Louisianan from New Orleans, was sugar rich and owned a vast ranch just north of town off the Taos Highway. John and his friend and partner, a Dutchman named Hendrik ter Weele had purchased the Dockwiller property, a spread of 550 acres, in 1939. They built a fabulous ranch house with many guest rooms and called it San Juan Ranch, which they ran as a guest ranch until 1956.
The ranch was on the west side of the road among the foothills and faced the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east. Farther to the west lay the Jemez range and enthralling sunsets which, after misty evenings, were reflected in incredibly gorgeous rainbows over the Sangres. This setting, John Crosby decided, was ideal for his opera, and a purchase was arranged. So the Santa Fe Opera, which many thought was John Crosby’s pipedream, was on its way to becoming reality.
In retrospect, the first house was very small, but elegant. It seated only 482, and all of the seating was open to the elements. The first rows were box seats of comfortable chrome and laced vinyl, followed by rows of seasoned timber benches topped with thick blue cushions. Redwood fences hugged by stately poplars protected the audience somewhat from the night air, but not enough, and there was no roof for the audience. We wore winter clothes, including heavy coats, took blankets and thermos bottles full of black, heavily-spiked coffee to ward off the cold.
The redwood stage and outspread wooden walls supported the roof at its rear, which then canted upward to be braced at the sides by six pillars. It was fitted with a series of baffles to reflect sound from the orchestra to the performers. Behind the orchestra pit and in front of the box seats lay a raised, curved pool with the water bouncing the sound to the audience. It was an acoustical marvel.
Sliding panels at the rear of the stage opened to the piñon-covered hills and the western sky which many a time produced a full moon or loud roll of thunder as if on cue.
From its first performance to a packed house, the Santa Fe Opera was a smashing success. Distinguished for its stunning productions, superlative performances, skillfully-designed sets and gorgeous costumes, it soon attracted opera buffs from around the world.
The original house burned to the ground in 1967, but from its ashes there arose a larger, more magnificent house which today seats more than four times as many patrons as the original house. The high standards set in that original house from its opening night have not only been upheld, but more often than not have been surpassed.
Because of the Opera’s excellence, its reputation put Santa Fe on the map and the small town, isolated from reality for 400 years, abruptly met the 20th Century.
8
In the 1960s, urban renewal came to Santa Fe and the town spruced up. Gone was the ugly intersection at Sandoval and Alameda known as five points—five streets that met at the intersection where, in the middle, a small island housed a liquor store. And gone were the tumble-down adobe shacks that bordered West DeVargas and faced the Santa Fe River. Bill Lumpkins and his crew had created from their shells an utterly charming, very Santa Feish facade with spiffy whitewashed interiors abutted by quaint courtyards. The entire block became highly desirable office space.
A new hotel went up on Sandoval, the Hilton. Built in approved territorial style, it cleaned up that street and the cross street which was lower San Francisco. The low-lying adobes that lined that part of San Francisco had provided many Santa Fe gentlemen with an evening of sport—gambling and girls. The Santa Fe Styles Committee ruled that the old bordellos were of historic value and could not be demolished, so instead they were restored and rehabilitated into more acceptable business enterprises.
The Plaza received a face lift. Portales were added where there were none. The ancient adobe Palace of the Governors, now a museum, which had given birth to the Ben Hur saga when Lew Wallace was Governor, was the oldest public building in continuous use in the United States. It was replastered, its vigas and canales were repaired, and the doors and window trim were freshly painted. Facades of the buildings around the Plaza were remodeled and many were replastered an adobe color to make them look more in keeping with what we had begun to call Santa Fe style. Even the four streets which enclosed the Plaza were torn up and redone, inlaid with brick.
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